


Satan in the Suburbs

by sidnihoudini



Series: Chris Evans, Bride of the Antichrist [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Blasphemy, Dark Comedy, Hellhounds, M/M, Meet-Cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-01-27 14:14:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 50,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12583660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sidnihoudini/pseuds/sidnihoudini
Summary: “I go by lots of names,” he says. “Little horn. Beelzebub. You can call me Sebastian.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> DEVIL IS FINALLY HERE! HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

_SATAN IN THE SUBURBS_

STARRING  
CHRIS EVANS……………………...... As Himself  
SEBASTIAN STAN………………....... Satan  
SCARLETT JOHANSSON………....... Satan’s Personal Assistant

*

1974

*

_Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate._

“I don’t know,” Sebastian squints, frowning up at the sign. “It seems kinda old-timey.”

They don’t exactly have a booming tourism industry; most visitors don’t make it past Minos, a judgey old white dude with snakes for arms. Sebastian hasn’t been down to the Second Circle in a while - he’s really more of a vestibule and above kind of guy, you know, being dark royalty and all - but he’s heard the tales.

This new sign… is not doing them any favors.

Scarlett sighs. Maybe all the fire and brimstone is making the sign look weird. He takes a considerate step back. Nope. Still medieval looking and strange. It’s right out of the 1400s - he remembers that decade well.

Weird era.

“Look, I’m not saying it’s… attractive.” Sebastian looks over at Scarlett, who is thoughtfully holding a clipboard against her stomach. She frowns. “But I’m not going to be the one who delivers bad news to a two-thousand-year-old lizard man who thinks his creepy nails make him an artist.”

Sebastian frowns and looks back at the sign.

“I’m your boss,” he says faintly, staring. “If I tell you to deliver the bad news to the lizard man, you deliver the bad news to the lizard man.”

Beside him, Scarlett’s mouth curls up into a smirk. She drawls, “Or what, you’ll turn me into a frog?”

“What am I, a witch?” Sebastian turns around to face her, grimacing. Scarlett meets his gaze as he puts on his best sales face, shows a little bit of teeth, and tries, “Maybe a snake?”

“Ssssssuck my dick,” is all she says, not having it.

Sebastian laughs, “Is that an invitation?”

~

_ANAHEIM, CALIFORNIA_

*

His parents recently remodeled their kitchen.

Shag carpet, Chris hears, is in. 

“Had to choose red, huh?” he swallows, staring helplessly at the ground.

The carpet has replaced the mustard yellow tile that Chris remembers. He closes his eyes, and instinctively takes a step backwards. Welcome home, welcome to Hell, welcome to war, welcome back to every memory you want to forget.

“You’re early!” His mother bustles towards him with both hands held out, ready to accept his face. Chris gets hugged tight. “Your father picked the color - you know I hate to argue.”

Gaze up on the ceiling, Chris breathes, “Right.”

“Well, come in!” she continues, hustling down the hallway. “Dinner isn’t ready, but I’ll make you a snack. Are you hungry?”

Chris rubs his face, and takes a step after her. His toes sink into the carpet. As he gets deeper into the house, he can hear the late afternoon news filtering in from the other room; the cigarette smoke winding around the smell of the orange trees that indicate he’s home.

As he passes by the dark, looming entrance of the living room, he says, “Hi dad.”

His mother is a few paces ahead of him. She throws over her shoulder, “He’s always falling asleep in front of that thing.”

Chris presses his lips together and silently follows her into the kitchen. As she gets to work, opening cupboards and pulling down plates, he wiggles his cigarettes out of his jean pocket and stands over the sink.

“How’s your job at the plant?” his mom asks.

How’s his job at the plant? The valley is booming, opportunity for growth is at an all-time high, and Chris’s boss liked him up until very recently. It’s laborious, back breaking work, and there’s been talk of a union the last couple months.

“It’s fine.” He ashes his cigarette in the sink.

“What about the VA office?” she continues, meticulously opening a brand new box of Twinkies. Chris watches the blade of the butter knife slide underneath the cardboard tab.

Frowning, Chris asks, “What about it?”

“They had those - what do you call them - prisoners of war - coming home the other night, right there live on the TV.” Chris watches her carefully cut two Twinkies in half, and artfully arrange them on a dinner plate. She turns around, looks Chris dead in the eye, and says, “The President shook their hands.”

Well isn’t that nice.

“Good for the President,” he grimaces. Then he sighs, and rubs his face. “And good for them, I guess.”

His mom watches him for another minute, and then picks up his plate, and carries it over to the kitchen table. Chris doesn’t move from the sink, but watches as she takes a seat at the table and reaches for her ashtray.

“Honey, I know you don’t want to hear this.” She waves him over as she lights a cigarette. “But I think you should move home. You won’t meet a nice girl in the city.”

Chris laughs, and pulls out the chair at the head of the table.

“That’s what you’re worried about?” he asks, dumbfounded.

She says, “I don’t like you out there all by yourself.”

In Los Angeles, it’s quiet and lonely and grey. Chris won’t deny that. He stares back at her, gaze even, and doesn’t say anything.

Finally, she lifts up the edge of his plate with the same hand holding her cigarette, and says, “Eat.”

Chris sighs and picks up half a Twinkie. His mother watches him as he eats; she keeps the tip of her frosted fingernail set between her teeth when her cigarette isn’t.

She doesn’t say anything until he’s finished his snack.

“Go sit with your father.” Chris frowns down at her as he stands up with his empty plate, but she doesn’t make eye contact this time. “Dinner is almost ready.”

Sighing, Chris sets the plate in the sink, and heads for the living room. His dad is no longer watching the local news, he’s moved onto tonight’s episode of Manhattan Transfer.

Chris sits in the armchair and eyes the hallway carpet from the safety of its upholstery.

“I hope you both like Salisbury steak,” is how his mother breaks the ongoing silence, forty minutes later and into an episode of Kojak.

She unfolds a TV tray, and sets Chris’s microwaved dinner down on top.

~

The drive back to Los Angeles is enchanting and familiar.

Tonight, the clouds are fluffy and pink; Chris watches the horizon as he heads down the I-5, trying to commit every part to memory.

When he was overseas, this is what he missed most. And if he ever has to leave again, this is what he wants to remember.

~

On Sunday afternoons, Chris has dinner with his parents. Come Monday morning, Chris heads to work at the plant.

But on Monday night -

Mitzi looks up from her booking ledger. Her eyes are narrow slits behind the tiny lenses of her reading glasses.

“Please,” Chris tries, putting on his best help-me face. “One more night.”

Then he raises his eyebrows, hopeful.

“Sweetheart.” Her voice is serious, all business. Chris feels his gut drop. “Last night you started your set with a full house.”

Chris can’t bite his tongue any longer. He blurts, “I know! I know, but I just-”

“How many people were left when you got booed off the stage?”

Well, jeez. That takes the wind right out of his sails. “I dunno, Mitzi, the lights were bright as hell and I…”

“Chris, sweetheart, honey, you’re beautiful,” she tells him, voice raspy - a two pack a day smoker. “You got nice looks, love the eyes, love the face, love the whole - thing - you’ve got going on. But you ain’t funny, sweetheart.”

Chris can’t go back to the plant tomorrow morning if tonight is the end of his comedy career. While the other guys have been talking about forming a union, Chris has been thinking about getting a full-time gig here at The Store. One that would pay his bills and everything.

“Listen, I got some new jokes - I got them right here,” he tries, eyebrows raising earnestly. He unwedges a little folded piece of paper from his front jean pocket, and half falls over her desk as he tries to show her. “Just, gimme a chance, Mitzi, please!”

She doesn’t even sneak a glance at his paper.

“Doll.” Now she’s patient, leaning back in her chair. Chris watches, mouth open, as she tugs the little reading glasses off her nose, and lets them hang off the chain around her neck. She rubs her face like he’s giving her a headache. “I met you three months ago. What month was it then?”

“Three months ago?” Chris tries to count backward. “That’s - that’s March.”

She snorts.

“Well, you can’t tell a joke, but you can count.” Chris frowns at her, and then immediately eases off when she looks up at him seriously. “It was March, Chris. And you know what you told me in March?”

Well, there’s no way he remembers that. He looks down at his little note.

“You told me you were funny!” Mitzi exclaims. “And now here we are in June! Chris, sweetheart, the last laugh you got is when you knocked your stool over, and the whole curtain came down with it.”

That - “I said I was sorry about that!”

Mitzi looks at him seriously, mouth a straight line across.

“Honey,” she announces. “If apologies made you funny, you’d be Carlin, and I’d be selling out house every single night. You know how to make a screwdriver?”

Nope, definitely not. He nods earnestly and says, “Yes.”

“Good. Get an apron, get behind the bar.” She’s already going back to her ledger, one hand fumbling along her chest for her reading glasses. Without looking up, she says, “I don’t want to see you back on that stage until I say so.”

He complains, “Mitzi…”

“Listen, Chris. I got a bartender who quit an hour ago, and a comedian who can’t get my audience to laugh.” As she looks up at him, Chris realizes that there is no room left for discussion. “You run the bar, or you sit in the audience. Your choice.”

~

Chris chooses the bar.

~

He walks home from Mitzi’s every night. His place isn’t far, just a couple blocks, and he always stops to get dinner from the little convenience store on the corner of Sunset and Palm.

“How’s it going, man?” Chris asks, slinging a six pack of beer and a package of hot dogs up onto the counter. As an afterthought, he snags some gum, too.

On the other side of the counter, Yash nods, smiles, and replies, “Pretty good, and you?”

Yash immigrated to Los Angeles in 1966 - two kids, a wife, the whole thing. He was the first person Chris met after moving here from Anaheim, and still the one he talks to most often. Without Chris asking, Yash sets a pack of cigarettes down on top of his beer.

“Could be better,” Chris sighs. He reaches back to wiggle his wallet out of his jeans, and watches Yash’s hands as he gets a paper thin plastic bag opened. For a split second, Chris blinks and sees Yash’s hands covered in blood and gore. He closes his eyes tighter, and shakes his head, and flips his wallet open. “I think I got fired, but I’m not sure.”

Yash laughs at him, and then tisks.

“You are unsure of it all,” he says, and then, solemnly, as he leans over the counter, he adds, “Confidence is everything.”

Chris laughs, startled and charmed. He helps Yash bag his meagre selection of purchases, and then hands over a ten dollar bill.

“From your mouth to my ears,” he says easily, gathering the handle of his bag up and turning to leave. He offers a warm smile and a wave over one shoulder, and adds, “See you tomorrow, man.”

Yash reinterates to his back, “Confidence!”

Chris laughs and waves him off, and bounces down the two shallow concrete stairs that connect the glass door of the convenience store back to the sidewalk outside.

“Confidence,” he sighs to himself, shaking his head.

He knows Yash means well. Almost everyone Chris meets _means well_ , and that’s fine, that’s more than some people think he deserves. Chris shakes his head, trying to clear his thoughts. It’s been years, but it’s all still right there - and not just the war, either, but the years that followed - the months of misery, unable to console himself.

How Mitzi ever thought he had a funny bone in his body, he’ll never know.

Chris lights a cigarette at the next do-not-walk sign, and tips his head back, trying to relax. He exhales smoke through his nose, and keeps his eyes closed until someone jostles past him, unimpressed.

The rest of his walk home goes by fast.

Before Chris goes to bed, he microwaves his hot dogs, and eats them standing over the kitchen sink.

~

“No,” Mitzi tells him the next night, before he’s even had a chance to open his mouth.

He thinks about what Yash said to him last night. Confidence.

“I can do it,” he blurts, sounding a little desperate. Not exactly what he was angling for, but it’s better than saying nothing at all. “Please, Mitzi. One last night.”

“Sorry, sweetheart.” She squints up from behind her glasses, pupils huge. “Not a chance.”

~

Chris spends the night pouring whiskey sours and taking caps off of beer bottles.

He counts the money in the register at the end of the night, and delivers it to Mitzi in her office, a decidedly glum look on his face.

“Cheer up, sugar.” She snaps a piece of gum between her teeth. “It could be worse, huh?”

Chris frowns at her, and accepts his $15 for five hours of work. Lucky he made another $15 in tips, too. Flexing a little muscle is a real easy way to get another quarter out of every lady that comes across his path.

On his way home, he stops at the convenience store to see Yash and buy a can of Manwich.

“I couldn’t do it, Yash,” he sighs, setting his dinner on the counter.

Yash looks at him interestedly, then says, “Confidence takes practice.”

“You got that right.” Chris watches Yash punch the price of his can of meat into the cash register. “Better give me another pack of Pall Mall 100s.”

He’s seen the ads - these ones are supposed to be better for you, calming on the throat and such, all natural. After the hand-rolled shit he smoked in Vietnam, these are practically vitamins.

Yash gives him a stick of jerky, probably because Chris looks like a sad dog who needs a bone, and sends him off into the night.

Twenty minutes later, Chris is standing at the oven, heating up his can of Manwich in the only pan he has. He’s got the TV on in the living room, the very last fifteen minutes of Carson playing through. He’s lucky he caught it; usually he gets home just in time to see the NBC nightly sign-off, and the rainbow colored bars.

Rodney Dangerfield - funny guy, one of Chris’s favorites - is distracting him. 

“I went to my doctor, I says, I told him I got suicidal tendencies,” he starts, adjusting his tie, jostling in front of that familiar curtain Chris dreams about in-between the blood and the brains and the war. “He told me from now on, I have to pay in advance!”

Chris laughs along with the studio audience, and turns the heat off on the stove.

He stands in the kitchen in his underwear and eats his food right out of the pan as he watches the rest of the set, and then the interview that follows when Dangerfield gets called over to take a seat at the desk.

Jeez, Chris would be too intimidated to get a word out.

“Confidence,” he mutters into the remains of his sloppy joe pan.

The ground beef doesn’t have advice for him, but boy, he’d do anything to be that funny. He’d even settle for just a little bit of ch--

“AHH,” Chris shouts, dropping his pan to the ground as a ball of smoke explodes behind him. Without thinking, he dives behind the kitchen counter, and backs himself up until his shoulders hit the wall.

His heart is beating so fast, he can’t catch his breath.

 _Are you there, God? It’s me, Chris,_ he thinks, a little bit hysterical.

“You know,” an unfamiliar voice says, from the other side of the counter. Chris eyes the knife sitting beside the oven. “He was a lot funnier as a car salesman.”

As the fog clears, a tendril of smoke curls its way closer to Chris. He stares at it, eyes wide - did this guy blast his way in, or something? - and then squeezes his eyes closed when it fizzles a strange red tint. It looks controlled, but that isn’t possible.

Chris shakes his head, but the hallucination doesn’t clear like it usually does.

“Knock knooock,” the voice drawls, and then Chris is at staring unfamiliar feet, set into unfamiliar basketball sneakers, attached to unfamiliar - tanned - ankles.

They come to an immediate stop, rubber soles squeaking against the kitchen tile. Chris watches as the smoke curls again, stretching out into the air like tentacles, like it can feel and protect.

Chris bursts out laughing. He’s finally lost it.

“Great,” the person says, succinct.

Still cracking up, Chris runs a hand over his head, and leans his full weight back against the wall. There’s a man standing in front of him, in brand new white sneakers and tiny red basketball shorts. No shirt, obviously.

“Who are you supposed to be?’ Chris asks, flabbergasted.

A slow, curly grin twists the stranger’s mouth up at the corners, until it’s a wide, devastating smile.

“I go by lots of names,” he says. “Little horn. Beelzebub. You can call me Sebastian.”

Chris’s subsiding laughter takes a quick turn back into horror.

There are a lot of things Chris wants to say.

What comes out is, “Where’s your tail?”

“We all have our party tricks.” Sebastian picks a spoon up off the counter, and checks himself out in the reflection. Chris has no idea what he’s looking for, but whatever it is, it makes him roll his eyes and say, “Of course.”

Then he tilts the spoon a little more, and gives himself another once over.

“There’s a...” Chris clears his throat. “A mirror in the bathroom, if you want it.”

The smoke jerks towards Chris, like it heard him, before Sebastian’s gaze snaps over and the haze suddenly, instantly, disappears. Chris’s stomach lurches: there’s something inhuman, almost serpentine, about his eyes.

In a split second, the spoon Sebastian was holding is bent in half, like a wilted rose.

“You’re funnier than you think you are,” Sebastian tells him. “But not that funny.”

The hair on the back of Chris’s neck stands up; his fingers curl against the tiled floor. But, just as quick as the heavy feeling in the room comes, it’s gone again, and that sunshiney expression is back on Sebastian’s face once more.

He holds the spoon up, still floppy. Chris blinks without meaning to - he can’t stop it from happening, a human impulse - and in the split second his eyes are closed, the spoon is back to its regular old shape.

“I can offer you something you need,” Sebastian tells him, simple as that.

Chris frowns.

“You think these guys you see on TV got there by themselves?” Sebastian continues, not waiting for Chris to reply. “Record deals, gigs, fame, money - I can give you whatever you want.”

He has a sharp, sudden daydream without his body’s permission. Chris’s brain jumps the track, and feeds him crystal clear visuals of what Sebastian is talking about, even the ones he’s never pictured for himself.

It feels like forced entry into his brain; it pinches, it hurts. As his mind winds through the offering reel, Chris grimaces, eyes squeezing closed. The lights are too bright.

“Anything,” Sebastian says. “It’s yours.”

Chris tries to catch his breath. He rubs his head, disoriented.

“I don’t want anything,” he manages, gasping.

Sebastian takes two strides, and squats down at Chris’s knee.

“Liar.” He says it like he knows something Chris doesn’t.

When Chris turns his head to look at Sebastian, he’s surprised by how close they suddenly are. Sebastian’s eyes are ghostly this close up. Chris swallows, throat tight.

“You don’t know anything about me,” Chris tries to counter. His voice betrays him, and comes out shaky and small.

Sebastian’s eyes flash. His lips curve up into a close mouthed smile.

“I know you brought me here.” His eyelashes flicker as he looks down to Chris’s chin and then back up again. Chris tilts his head back against the wall, trying to give himself just a little more breathing room. Sebastian’s nostrils flare, and the smile gets deeper. “In tiny red gym shorts,” his tongue slips out just enough to wet his lips. “To give you what you want most.”

All of a sudden Chris can’t breathe very well. His face feels hot.

“In exchange for what?” tumbles out of his mouth.

Sebastian bites his bottom lip. He looks carefully at Chris’s face, and then wrinkles up his nose, eyes scrunching up into half moons.

“You know what,” he replies, happy.

He knows. He’s heard the stories, the tales of Louisiana musicians selling their souls in the twenties, trading personal effects and handwritten letters at the crossroads. Chris’s heart thuds steady in his chest, so strong he feels it in his throat.

“How about my firstborn instead?” he counters.

Sebastian makes a ‘pfft’ sound, and then laughs and leans away, finally giving Chris some space as he shifts his weight back onto his heels.

“Like I could ever cash in on that,” he snorts, standing up. Chris watches, stunned, as Sebastian opens his fridge, and retrieves a can of Coke that he doesn’t even remember being in there. Sebastian cracks it, takes a sip, and promises, “We can figure out a payment plan later.”

Chris thinks about the stage at Mitzi’s, and the last time he was on it.

He thinks about pouring drinks all night.

He thinks about going back home to Anaheim.

“So you’re into dudes, huh?” Sebastian asks, interrupting his thoughts.

Chris’s entire body runs cold; nobody has ever said it out loud like that.

“Excuse me?” he blurts, eyebrows jumping all the way up his forehead. He feels kind of dumb still sitting on the floor, but he’d feel dumber trying to climb to his feet at this point. “That’s none of your business.”

A pause.

And then Chris can’t help but ask, “...how did you know that?”

Sebastian’s entire face changes as he grins.

“I’m the King of the Bottomless Pit,” he shrugs, taking another sip of his Coke. The color of the can matches his shorts perfectly. Chris can’t believe his own brain manufactured those. As if to double down on that thought, Sebastian adds, “I know all your secrets.”

Chris doesn’t know how he feels about that.

“Nice call on the handcuffs that one time, by the way,” Sebastian smirks, winking.

Of everything that’s happened in the last fifteen minutes, that’s the thing Chris doesn’t know how to respond to. He frowns and gets up off the floor.

He thinks about his mother, and the bible she keeps beside the phone book in the living room. He thinks about going to church as a child, and the way the reverend made it crystal clear that the devil and all his friends are not to be fucked with.

Then he thinks about grenades and amphetamines and seeing the insides of his sergeant's head, and remembers that God doesn’t save the good ones, anyways.

A few feet away, Sebastian poses like he’s in a Coca-Cola commercial.

“It’s the real thing,” he grins.

Jesus, what is Chris even thinking? He can’t believe he was considering - however briefly - the idea of making a deal with the devil.

“I can’t.” He shakes his head.

Sebastian doesn’t seem very surprised.

“If you want me, you know where to find me,” he replies cheerily, stepping forward and extending a hand. In it, he holds a tiny rectangle of black cardstock.

Chris, not thinking, takes it.

He looks down, and frowns as he reads the golden words etched into the paper.

All it says, in all capitalized letters, is, THE DEVIL. He flips it over, expecting an address or a phone number, but that side is completely blank.

When Chris looks up, his kitchen is empty.

~

Chris doesn’t dream that night.

~

“Good, you’re here,” Mitzi says to him when he turns up for work.

The only time Mitzi has been glad to see him is the day she hired him.

“Something wrong?” Maybe she needs something heavy moved in the kitchen.

“Tonight’s open mic cancelled,” she says shortly. “You’re up in five minutes.”

Chris’s stomach bottoms out.

He blinks, opens his mouth, closes it, and then asks, “What?”

“Listen, I’m not happy about it,” she tells him, eyebrows arching halfway up her forehead as she pokes him in the chest. “But I can’t have an empty stage.”

“Thanks,” Chris says weakly. “I appreciate the vote of confidence.”

“I call it like I see it, sugar.” She shrugs and snaps her gum.

Ten minutes later, Chris’s hand is shaking as he tries to wedge the mic back into the stand.

“I, I, uh,” he stumbles, eyebrows knotting. Jesus, that light feels hot. Does that feel hot to anyone else? “I was waiting in line at the DMV the other day, and, man. Those guys don’t know what they’re doing, huh?”

Two more people get up to go to the bar. A guy wearing jeans and a vest in the front row cups his hands to his mouth, and boos.

“I swear, I was waiting there all day,” Chris continues, removing the mic from its stand again. He looks down at the floor as he flips the mic cord behind him, so he doesn’t trip over it again like last time. “I got war flashbacks.”

A girl Chris can’t see past the light yells, “PEACE IN VIETNAM!”

“Children aren’t for burning!” another voice yells.

Chris stumbles, blinking hard as he stares out at the abyss of bright lights and black shadows. He was deep in the jungle the first time he saw an injured child. Bored and walking around the rice paddies, he’d stumbled across a pagoda with a hidden compartment built underneath. After using his machete to pry the trap door in the ground open, he’d come face to face with a family, all three members covered in blood.

In Los Angeles, Chris has accidentally opened that door again.

“I uh,” he starts. Stops.

Someone boos and throws a french fry, and all of a sudden it’s a monsoon. Chris dodges as an entire glass of beer hits the edge of the stage; Budweiser arches through the air as the glass smashes into a thousand pieces.

Mitzi rescues him, but by then, the damage has already been done.

~

Chris takes a six-pack of beer from behind the bar, and leaves two bucks in change by the register: 1 buck fifty for the beer, and fifty extra cents for the broken glass and the trouble.

He cracks one as he walks home.

Jeez, he can’t believe there was much lower on the ladder to go than getting pulled off the stage to serve drinks, but apparently there is, and Chris has hit every rung on his way down.

His brain serves up the sound of those hecklers on repeat. He twists and turns throughout the neighborhood - taking streets he usually wouldn’t take - but he can’t outrun the bad memory, especially when it’s so fresh in his mind.

He comes to a stop in front of the window of a TV repair place.

There’s gotta be at least twenty sets here, all stacked up, all playing the same news channel. Some are a little fuzzy, reception not so good, others are colored strangely, and some are not colored at all - black and white, still, relics of Chris’s childhood.

As Chris settles his weight on his heels, content to sip the last quarter of his beer and watch the nightly news in silence, something strange happens.

It starts from the left. Each screen pops - a power surge, if Chris had to guess - but instead of blacking out, fizzles to snow. Chris stands, stunned, as he watches every single set pop and fizz in sequence - the top row, from left to right, and then the middle, following the same, the big finale coming with the bottom row.

Once the last set has fried, the sequence starts again.

The first television, number one on the top left, pops back to life - back to programming - and Chris immediately drops his beer.

It’s Sebastian. Chris knows it without thought, knows it the same way he knows his own face when he looks in the mirror. Just like that, pop, pop, pop, each set turns back on, until there’s an entire bank of Sebastian, dancing like one of those 1960s beach party girls.

Chris’s mouth drops open. He looks over one shoulder, and then the other - is anyone else seeing this? - but it’s so late, the streets are dark and deserted. There’s nobody around to witness Chris’s briskly departing sanity.

He looks back to the television screens. Sebastian is dressed in the same shade of red he was in Chris’s kitchen, except now he’s got red hot pants - tight, tight shorts - and the classic devil horns and a tail. Just like Chris asked about.

It feels like he’s looking right at Chris. But that doesn’t make sense.

Sebastian can’t see him through the television. Right?

Because he doesn’t know what else to do, Chris stands there for another long moment, watching as Sebastian dances, spinning his tail and grinning bright and white in-between doing the twist and the jerk.

He blinks, and rubs his face, and resolutely turns around, so his back is to the television wall.

If he tells his mother about this, she’ll never let him leave Anaheim again.

~

The rest of his walk is uneventful.

He stops by to see Yash and commiserate over his lackluster performance while Yash pulls him a hot dog off the rotating belt in the window and sticks it on a bun.

“You will have better luck tomorrow, my friend,” Yash says seriously, as he hands Chris back his change.

Chris eats his hot dog on the way home, and throws the last little piece to a pitbull that barks after him all the way down the length of a chain link fence framing someone’s front yard.

At home, Chris sticks four beer in the fridge, and takes one more for himself.

Then he sits down in front of his own television and lights a cigarette.

He leaves it on the first channel he finds. He can’t stomach watching Carson after what happened earlier tonight. Frowning, he flicks the ash from his cigarette into the ashtray balanced on the wooden arm of his armchair.

This looks like some kind of B-movie, maybe from the fifties. Chris has never been one for horror; not until it became a part of his life, anyway.

He’s zoning out and halfway through his cigarette when it happens again.

 _A brutal orgy of ghastly terror!_ spins its way across the screen. A woman screams. A black and white shot of a swarm of bats as they fly off into the night. _Devouring people like flies!_ A fake bat on a string lurches across the screen, surprising a laugh out of Chris.

And then,

 _See the cruelest man killers ever photographed!_ before it cuts to Sebastian, dressed in something leather that wouldn’t look out of place wrapped around Bettie Page. He’s whipping a man on his knees.

Sebastian turns to the screen, and winks at Chris.

“This isn’t real,” Chris whispers to himself, scrunching his eyes closed.

Blindly, he reaches for the remote, and fumbles around with the buttons until he gets the channel switched over. He leaves his eyes closed for a minute - just until he knows its safe - and then squints one open.

This channel is showing a rerun of The Price is Right episode from earlier in the day.

That’s safe, right? Chris opens his other eye, still wary.

“Now here’s the next item up for bid on The Price is Right,” Bob Barker says.

The stage door splits in half, and a fake little backyard garden rolls out.

“It’s a threeeeee wheeeeeeel vehicle!” the announcer booms, to the surprised gasps of the audience. Chris groans and rubs a hand over his face as the plastic grass topped platform slowly spins around, and Sebastian grins at the camera. “From Muskin Corporation of Colton, California, it’s the Tri-Cat: the fun way to go over rough, hilly countries, sandy river bottoms, or speeding over dry lakes!”

Chris, from behind his hand, watches through the V between his middle and pointer fingers.

The audience is gasping, ooh-ing and ahh-ing as the three-wheeler makes a slow rotation, Sebastian sitting side saddle on its seat all the while. He’s dressed just like the other models Chris has seen on this show: a bright yellow number, cut right at the knee, hardly scandalous.

“The Tri-Cat can really take it!” the announcer adds.

Sebastian laughs, and pretends to rev the gas as he mugs again for the camera.

“Linda, I’d like to have your bid in dollars, please,” Bob Barker says to the first contestant. She bids $350.

Chris sits there and watches, horrified and mesmerized, as each contestant places their bids, one as low as $1, and another as high as $400. He isn’t surprised when the camera pans to the very last contestant, and it’s Sebastian again, this time wearing a pretty obviously fake mustache and a denim newsboy cap.

He leans stoically over his burnt orange colored podium, and says into the mic very close and very seriously, “I’d like to bid $666, Bob.”

“Too high,” Chris mutters, despite himself.

“Aaand the actual retail price is,” Bob Barker says, “Three hundred and ninety dollars, and Linda is our winner, now Linda, come up here and let’s see what else you can win!”

As the camera pans along the line of players, following Linda as she runs the length of the aisle behind them, Chris laughs when he sees the top of Sebastian’s podium on fire - the same strange tendrils of smoke he saw that first day looping up into the air.

“Maybe next time,” Chris tells the TV with a grin.

~

Chris gives up. He heads to bed, turns off the light, and falls asleep.

~

He’s due at the factory the next morning.

Chris is half asleep when he leaves his apartment at 7AM: that’s his excuse for why it takes him so long to notice.

When he does, he stops dead in his tracks in the middle of the sidewalk.

Up there, in the Hollywood Hills, just above the familiar haze of smog that hangs low over the city, is the Hollywood sign. Chris doesn’t notice it often, because it’s not that much to look at: dilapidated, deteriorated after decades of half-assed maintenance.

This morning, Chris notices it.

This morning, it’s bright white and restored to its almost former glory.

This morning, it says HELLYWOOD.

“No,” he says, shaking his head. He stares up at the sign, but there it is, physical proof of Chris losing his marbles. Before he can help himself, he blurts, “Is anyone else seeing this?!”

“Get outta the way,” someone mutters, hustling past him.

~

He’s halfway through his work day when he snaps.

“FINE,” he yells, storming out into the parking lot. It’s empty - a ghost town - despite the rows and rows of cars parked in perfect lines, each one a symbol of wealth, a car for every man that works in the office above the factory.

Breathing heavy - pissed off - Chris rips his wallet out of his jeans pocket.

He thumbs through the back, where he keeps his cash, where he stored the useless business card Sebastian left him with. He’s so riled up his fingers are shaking: he swears and grimaces as he finally rips the card out.

Licking his lips, he looks at the front, and then the back.

“What am I supposed to do with this?!” he shouts up at the sky, frustrated.

Nothing happens. Chris doesn’t know what he was expecting. Pissed off, he throws the business card down to the ground, and then turns around, planning to head back inside.

“Ahh!” he exclaims, almost dropping his wallet.

A few feet away, on the trunk of his boss’s car, Sebastian is spread out and grinning.

Today, Sebastian came for business. Long gone are the skimpy red outfits and outlandish television disguises. Now, Sebastian is wearing a form-fitting suit, dark and velvet and much nicer than anything Chris has ever seen in real life.

“Ready to make that deal now?” He raises one eyebrow.

Chris stares back, feeling himself deflate a little. He looks over at the doors of the factory. He thinks about the show last night. He remembers the emptiness that accompanied him back home, through the foyer of his childhood home, and sat like a second guest all through dinner.

He thinks about the things Sebastian has promised him.

“Yeah,” Chris breathes. He watches as Sebastian stands up, and gulps. “I’m ready.”

Sebastian moves closer. It’s a beautiful day in Los Angeles, hot but not baking, a whistle of wind through the palm trees. All of that ends the moment Sebastian steps into Chris’s personal space. The breeze dies. Above them, the sky darkens in the way it does when the sun disappears behind a cloud.

In front of him, Sebastian is all-encompassing. He grins like a shark.

“Sealed with a kiss,” he murmurs, looking down at Chris’s lips for just a split second before he leans in.

Chris closes his eyes, and feels his body transform as Sebastian presses their mouths together.

~

In a blink, the parking lot is gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay I'm going to try not to forget anything:
> 
> * There SHOULD be six parts total, posted regularly over the next two weeks.
> 
> * Check out [the devil tag](https://thenavynumber.tumblr.com/tagged/devil%20au) on TNN if you'd like to see some inspo. The Chris in this story is Avengers promo buzzed head, and the Seb in this story is a little bit of every era.
> 
> * After the final chapter, I'll post a list of the pop culture/biblical/other references used in this story, as well as a playlist.
> 
> * ALSO after the homewrecker debacle, I want to be really clear that I don't tag story spoilers. This story is dark and weird and (hopefully) funny, and also has some probably offensive stuff due to the nature of Seb being actual Satan and the story taking place in the 70s.
> 
> If you like it, let me know! Leave a comment or [come say haaay](http://sidnihoudini.tumblr.com) on tumbls.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the comments and messages on part one!

The ground sways beneath Chris’s feet.

A piece of him is terrified to open his eyes. Whatever life he’s condemned himself to, this is where it starts. No longer can he look back passively: this is it. He’s thought about it, and now, he’s making a deal with the devil.

To say he’s surprised to see a houseboat swaying on the water in front of him would be an understatement.

Overhead, a seagull calls out over the ocean before dipping down to land on a post.

Chris looks at his feet: steel-toed work boots, the same ones he had just a few minutes ago, except now here they are, standing on a dock above water.

“You were expecting somewhere ...warmer?” Sebastian smirks, wrinkling his nose a bit.

Speechless, Chris opens his mouth, and then closes it.

“We’ll get there,” Sebastian says off-handedly. Chris isn’t sure if that’s good or bad.

Sebastian is still dressed in his suit as he steps off the dock, and onto the platform of the houseboat. The boat itself is a wood number, with lots of strangely shaped windows and railings that seem to lead to nowhere. _The Underworld_ is curled along the side in red paint.

Hopefully paint.

Still disoriented, Chris turns around.

Up at the front of the marina is a sign that says MARINA DEL REY in loopy, dark green cursive. So they’re still in California, then, barely out of LA.

Sebastian’s head pokes back around the side of the boat. Now he’s wearing a Captain’s hat: white and dark blue, with a gold twist of rope around it. Chris stares.

“Are you coming?” he calls, annoyed.

Right. Chris clears his throat and nods.

As he steps off the dock and onto the boat platform, two huge black dogs materialize from behind Sebastian. They’re - they’re dogs, they’re definitely dogs, they’re barking and they have four legs each, but they’re - not of this world.

“Dogs?” He immediately drops down onto one knee.

Both are huge. Their heads come up to Sebastian’s waist. Chris holds his hands out, and almost falls backwards when he realizes that both heads are attached to the same body.

“Hellhounds, actually,” Sebastian corrects. Then he snaps, “Cabal, get out of him!”

Chris watches as the dogs separate again: now two beings instead of one with two heads. He blinks, stunned, and gingerly pets the first head that reaches him.

“Cabal.” That’s familiar. He squints up at Sebastian - he remembers that name from The Sword and The Stone: Arthur’s dog. He asks, “Is the other one Merlin?”

Unimpressed, Sebastian replies, “Baby Cinnamon.”

That really makes Chris laugh. For the first time in a - a really, really, long time - he almost falls over as he throws his head back and cackles.

“You don’t say,” he manages, once he recovers. He pets the dog’s head some more and says solemnly, “Very nice to meet you, Baby Cinnamon.”

Cabal almost knocks him over when he realizes his counterpart is getting more attention. Chris laughs again, and, after offering one more round of pets per head, gets back to his feet.

For the first time he realizes that Sebastian is not only wearing the colorful captain’s hat, but a nice pressed pair of white slacks, too. They even have the navy pleat carefully in front.

When Sebastian catches him staring, he grins and pulls a pair of mirrored aviator sunglasses out of nowhere.

“Let’s dot our I’s in my office,” he says.

Chris nods, unsure of what else to do, and awkwardly tucks his hands into the pockets of his work overalls as Sebastian leads the way into the heart of the houseboat. 

It’s homey, all things considered. The inside seems so much bigger than the outside. Chris is momentarily breathless at the huge pane of stained glass window they walk past. Each section is circular, like Chris imagined hobbit hole windows as a kid, but cut with lead and shades of red and orange that Chris has never seen before.

He jumps when he sees a set of bright green cat eyes watching, balefully, from the darkness beneath a table. Before he can take a second look, Sebastian is moving through another hallway.

“This shouldn’t take long,” Sebastian announces, and then, they turn the corner into a two-storey office. Chris is sure his eyes bug out of his head. There’s no way this cavern would fit into the houseboat he saw on the outside.

In fact, he’s so stunned by the room he’s walked into, he doesn’t even see the blonde woman sitting at the head of a long table until she speaks.

“Well aren’t you pretty.” She has a devilishly Crest-white smile twisting its way across her mouth.

Chris stares at her, bewildered, and then looks at Sebastian. He points to himself - _me?_ \- before he even realizes what he’s doing.

“Uh oh.” Her smirk goes absolutely nowhere. “He’s cute, too.”

“Shut up,” Sebastian tells her joyously. “Chris, this is Scarlett, my assistant. Scarlett, Chris.”

She’s who Chris always pictured when the bible talked about wicked girls: body poured into her bell bottom jeans and halter top, bright red lips, bouncy curls falling over each shoulder.

“Hi,” he manages, one hand rocketing up to do a cursory wave.

Another wicked smile worms its way across her face as she counters, “Hi.”

“Let’s get you out of those,” Sebastian says, and before Chris even gets a chance to look down at his own body, his clothes have changed.

Gone are his work overalls and boots, and back are his usual jeans and a t-shirt. The only unfamiliar thing about this outfit is the little red heart that’s been stitched into the fabric over his pec, ‘Satan’ written in cursive inside of it.

When Chris looks back up, Scarlett is laughing, and Sebastian is no longer dressed like a cheap Halloween captain. He’s back in a plain black t-shirt, and matching jeans.

“Scarlett will process your paperwork,” he explains, crossing the room to elegantly fall across a red velvet chair at the head of the table. He brings an apple up to his mouth, and pauses before taking a bite to add, “Have a seat.”

Chris gingerly sits down next to Scarlett.

“Any questions before we get started?” Scarlett asks. Her voice is as bright as someone who works in a department store.

She shuffles around some paper, and smiles over at Chris.

“What kind of…” He trails off when he realizes he doesn’t know how to phrase the question he wants an answer to. Frowning, he reconsiders his thought, and then tries again, “What kind of terms am I agreeing to, here?”

Scarlett immediately looks over to Sebastian, still munching on his apple.

“You’re making a deal with the devil,” Sebastian says. “In exchange for your soul, I’m offering you a lifetime of good fortune. I’ll make you funny. And then I’ll come for you in twenty years.”

Chris asks, “What happens after that?”

“Eternal damnation.” Sebastian shrugs. He bites into his apple again; crunch.

Boy, if his mother could see him now. Chris looks at one of the papers Scarlett has ready for him to sign, but he can’t read a word of it. Latin, maybe. He thinks about what Sebastian just said: twenty years of good fortune for a lifetime afterwards spent in hell.

“That’s fine.”

He was going to go to hell anyways. He might as well get something out of it.

Sebastian pauses. He eyes Chris, no expression on his face for the first time since the night Chris met him in the kitchen. Then, he frowns.

“It’s a match made in heaven, then,” Sebastian finally replies.

Chris stares back - Sebastian holds his gaze - and then looks at what Scarlett is doing.

“I need your name here.” An ancient looking book slides across the table.

She taps one black manicured finger against an empty line. Chris’s heart starts to pound when he sees there are names above where his will go, all written out in sloppy, blurry letters.

Blood.

“What is this?” Chris asks, trying to blink away the memories the blood brings up.

Scarlett smiles at him like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, and offers up a scary looking pin to poke his finger with.

“Just paperwork,” she says serenely.

Chris sticks his hand out, and squeezes his eyes as tightly closed as he can make them.

“I thought we already did everything,” he grits out, trying not to recoil as he feels her move. A second later, the pad of his pointer finger pinches.

He opens his eyes to Scarlett’s confused expression. She asks, “Did what?”

“You know…” He looks at her, waiting for her to get it, and then looks over at Sebastian, who is now pretty obviously trying to keep himself from laughing, two fingers pressed to his bottom lip as he fights back a grin. 

Chris looks back at Scarlett, and dumbly points to his lips.

“Oh, honey,” Scarlett says, half of her mouth lifting up into a smile.

Great. So he let the devil kiss him for no reason. At least it was a pretty good kiss, even if it was just lip.

“Sign,” Scarlett directs him. She points to the spot again.

Chris has never signed something in blood before, but he still feels inept as he presses his finger to the ancient paper and immediately just stamps a big blob of blood. What do you even make blood-writing paper out of, anyways?!

Grimacing, he lightens up on the pressure of his finger, and struggles out _CE._

When he leans back, he startles as he realizes Sebastian is standing right behind him.

He leans over Chris’s shoulder, accepts an old-timey ink pen from Scarlett, and signs his name in looping, perfect cursive: _satanas fili abyssi._ Chris watches the curve of his tanned fingers work against the length of the pen.

“Signed, sealed, delivered,” Sebastian says, taking a step back. “Looks like I’m yours.”

Chris stares at his bloody finger, and wipes it on the thigh of his jeans.

“Something like that. Just a couple boring things to do.” Scarlett looks at Chris. “Who do you want to have as your emergency contact? Girlfriend?”

Behind him, Sebastian laughs.

“No,” Chris says, narrowing his eyes at Sebastian. Sebastian grins back. “I don’t have an emergency contact.”

Scarlett rolls her eyes, breathes, “Touchy,” and then, “Blood type?”

“Why do you need all this information?” Chris asks.

She looks back at him evenly. “Just covering all our bases.”

Right. That doesn’t sound suspicious at all.

“I should probably get back to work,” Chris manages. He pushes back from the table, and stands up, offering a wary look over at Sebastian. “Is there anything else… you know. You need to do?”

Chris doesn’t feel any different.

“Nah,” Sebastian tells him. “We’ll catch up tomorrow.”

Then the air crackles, and he’s standing in the parking lot at the factory.

“I need my boots!” he shouts up at the sky. He can’t go back into work with <3 Satan stitched over his chest.

There’s a pause, and then two boots fall out of the sky out of nowhere. Chris only narrowly manages to get out of their trajectory. Falling behind them, slow and drifting, are his overalls.

“Thank you,” he mutters, picking all three items up off the ground.

~

Nobody at the factory looks at him any differently.

Every time Chris catches his own reflection, he expects to see something: black eyes, something satanic, the mark of the beast. The first thing he does after getting home from work is strip in front of the mirror, and check his skin for a rogue 666.

He comes up empty. And pale.

After bombing at the Comedy Store the other night, Mitzi told him to take a week off, so Chris doesn’t have anything to do after work. It’s Saturday tomorrow, a good enough day as any to kill time by heading out to his parents.

For now, he sits in his armchair in front of the television and watches whatever’s on primetime. 

Part of him keeps waiting - and hoping - to see Sebastian pop up on screen.

~

Chris is in the shower the next morning when Sebastian drops by.

“JESUS,” he swears, stumbling back against the shower curtain and almost taking it down with him as he slides on the tiles.

In the stall behind him, Sebastian grins and corrects, “Satan, actually.”

Chris frowns, heart racing, and covers each nipple with a hand.

“I’ve seen it, and I’m not impressed,” Sebastian promises.

Face falling, Chris drops both his hands.

“Alright, I’m a little impressed,” Sebastian concedes. His gaze lowers from Chris’s face, to his chest, to his -

“WHY ARE YOU HERE,” Chris snaps, reaching to turn the water off. The taps squeak and the pipes clunk as the water comes to a thundering halt.

Chris rips the curtain back, and feels around for his towel.

“Consider it a courtesy call.” In the mirror opposite the shower, Chris catches Sebastian checking out his ass.

Determined now, Chris turns to narrow his eyes at Sebastian, and pointedly wraps the towel around his hips.

“Have you ever heard of a phone?” he asks, trying to knot the towel around his hips.

Sebastian rolls his eyes and steps close, jerking both ends of the towel out of Chris’s hands. He readjusts its fit around Chris’s waist, and effortlessly loops the two ends together before tucking everything in.

“Kitten, I was there when the phone was invented,” Sebastian says. “And it still doesn’t live up to the hype.”

Chris offers him a flat expression at the pet name. Sebastian counters with a wide grin, frankly insulting in its charm.

“So a houseboat, huh?’ he grimaces, changing the subject.

Then he steps around Sebastian, and heads out of the bathroom, into his bedroom.

“What, you were expecting something different?” Sebastian asks. Chris hears him following behind, the gentle squeak of Chris’s mattress as he sits down. 

Chris clears his throat, and positions himself behind his open closet door so Sebastian can’t see him while he gets dressed.

“Yeah, you know…” Chris trails off, letting his towel drop. “Hell.”

“Looked outside lately?” Sebastian laughs.

Chris pulls on a pair of underwear and scowls. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Hell’s complicated,” Sebastian says. “Luckily, Los Angeles makes one hell of a welcome mat.”

“What,” Chris grimaces, tugging his jeans up over his thighs. He steps around the closet door as he buttons up his fly with a disbelieving look on his face. “You’re saying Los Angeles is the gateway to hell?”

Sebastian, spread out across Chris’s bed on his elbows, grins wide.

“More like a foyer,” he smirks. “A nice vestibule.”

Chris doesn’t know whether he should believe that or not. He frowns.

“Well,” he finally settles on. “I have things to do today, so you gotta leave.”

“I thought we’d get to know each other a little better,” Sebastian says.

Still suspicious, Chris pulls a t-shirt over his head, and then looks at Sebastian some more. He’s still spread out across Chris’s bed, totally at home. At least today he’s dressed a little bit regular. He’s just wearing black jeans, and a t-shirt that says EASY.

“Why do you want to spend time with me?” Chris asks, wary.

When he sold his soul to the devil, he didn’t realize friendship was part of the deal.

“I like eye candy,” Sebastian tells him. Chris would be blind to not notice the way Sebastian’s gaze drops down to his dick and back up again. “Just so happens you’re my favorite flavor.”

Chris grimaces at him. “That line work often?”

Sebastian grins, tongue rolling against his bottom teeth, and shrugs.

“You’d be surprised,” he says.

“Well.” Chris picks up his wallet and keys. Sebastian seems charmed by how sour he’s acting in the face of such charisma. “I need to go to the bank first.”

He’s going to have to kill time until Sebastian gets bored.

There’s no way he’s taking Sebastian to dinner with his parents.

“Lead the way,” Sebastian announces, crawling out of Chris’s bed.

~

For the most part, Chris makes enough money to get by.

Between his pension and the factory, he usually has enough money to cover his rent and his utilities. But for the last couple months, his brother - estranged from their parents, and living off tips after running away to Texas - has been having a rough time, so Chris has been… helping him.

If his mother found out, she’d murder him.

The nice lady behind the bank counter, on the other hand, at least sounds sympathetic when she tells him he doesn’t have enough money in his account to cut a rent check for next month.

“Let me see if I can…” he fumbles, trailing off as he pulls out his wallet.

He’s still got a few tips in here from the last night he worked the bar. Maybe with those, plus an advance from his boss at the factory, he could work something out.

Maybe his landlord would give him an extension. He’s been a good tenant so far.

Chris is a little bit frazzled when Sebastian walks up to stand at the counter beside him. So far, Chris has managed to find an extra nine dollars, exactly. He lays a tenth dollar down on the counter with nervous fingers.

“Sir,” the bank teller begins, distracted from Chris’s predicament by Sebastian’s strange, sudden presence. “The line starts behind you.”

“I got that.” Sebastian snaps his gum. “Linda? That’s a pretty name.”

Chris looks up, confused. Sebastian has his sweet smile on, bewitching as any of the ladies who play genies or witches on TV. Chris’s fingers relax against the outsides of his wallet, no longer tense and digging through the worthless billfold as he senses something going on.

He stares between Sebastian and the bank teller.

“This guy,” Sebastian starts, arching one eyebrow in Chris’s direction, before he nods his head that way, too. “Is a klutz. Can’t be saved.”

Linda giggles and looks at Chris. Her eyes look darker, pupils as big as her irises.

“That bank statement you gave him? Already gone,” Sebastian continues. His voice sounds disbelieving now, mouth opening a little as he leads her into a laugh. Chris feels the slip of paper she gave him earlier begin to tremor beneath his hand. He eases off out of habit, and watches, stunned, as the paper crumples itself up and falls off the side of the counter. “I know, it’s the seventies, we’re trying to conserve trees, but if you could print him off a second copy, I’d sure appreciate it.”

Before the old, crumpled statement can get away, Chris stamps his foot over it.

As Linda turns around to fetch another copy of Chris’s bank statement, Sebastian turns, wide grin on his face. He winks and blows another bubble before purposely popping it with his tongue.

Chris goes a little red.

“Here you go, sir,” Linda says a moment later, handing over a fresh statement.

He tears his gaze away from her face to look down at the paper in his hand, still warm from where it slid through the printer.

When he reads the balance, he almost passes out. His vision goes black at the edges.

$66,666.

The background noise of the bank narrows to two muffled pinpricks in Chris’s ears, like he’s listening to the world through a tin can with a string.

“Wait,” he manages, faint.

But it’s too late - Linda is already cutting him a rent check at Sebastian’s request, and counting out a couple hundred in cash, each bill crisp and dreamlike as she snaps it down against the countertop.

By the time they’re back outside, Chris is deep inside the surreal feeling that is so familiar since Sebastian waltzed into his life.

“We just committed fraud,” he manages, feeling a little faint. He stares down at the statement, still clutched in one hand. In the other, the first copy that reads $145. “Oh god. I’m going to go to jail.”

Sebastian has already set off down the sidewalk, recounting the wad of cash the teller handed over as their parting gift.

“That won’t happen,” Sebastian says over his shoulder, casual. “But if you’re into prison stripes, all you have to do is ask.”

Chris swallows, body still prickling with anxiety.

What the hell has he done?

“You can’t do that!” he snaps, recovering from his shock.

Up ahead, Sebastian is a few paces ahead of him on the sidewalk that runs along the length of the bank. Chris jogs to catch up.

“Peanut, I can do whatever I want,” Sebastian counters.

Chris frowns at him. “Not when I’m around.”

For a split second, Sebastian’s expression goes blank. He’s surprised. Before Chris’s brain catches up to what he just said - pissing off the devil is a bad idea anyways, but especially when he holds the deed to your soul - Sebastian laughs.

“You’re something,” he smirks, gaze tripping over Chris’s face.

Chris grimaces back at him some more, and shakes the bank statement in his hand.

“Turn it back,” he demands.

Sebastian looks at him some more, and then rolls his eyes.

“Fine.” He doesn’t look happy about it. Chris watches him closely, even though Sebastian doesn’t have a tell when he’s pulling devil fuckery. Sebastian catches him staring, scoffs, and rolls his eyes. “I reversed it!”

Jaw clenching, Chris asks, “Promise?”

“I promise! Jeez,” Sebastian grimaces. “I didn’t take you for such a do-gooder.”

“I’m not stealing-” Chris cuts himself off when he realizes his voice is way louder than it should be. He lowers his voice into a hiss, and gets close to Sebastian to say, “I’m not stealing from a bank.”

Sebastian rolls his eyes again.

~

He manages to lose Sebastian an hour later.

Chris isn’t sure how, but Scarlett tracks them down in the middle of the Kroger. One minute he’s standing there, contemplating breakfast cereal, and the next, he’s watching every head in the place snap around as Scarlett clacks down the aisle in her high heels.

“Hey,” she greets Sebastian, before offering a sweet smile to Chris.

Sebastian has been eating an apple since Chris accidentally led him through the produce section. He arches a curious eyebrow at her.

“Got bait for you in Iowa,” is all she says.

And then just like that, they’re gone. Devil business.

Chris looks one way down the aisle, and then the other.

And then he goes back to choosing a box of cereal.

~

A few nights later, Chris drags himself back to The Comedy Store.

“You ever perform?” a nice girl asks.

She’s been sitting at the bar for the last ten minutes, slowly nursing her beer as Chris cleans glasses with a damp rag.

“You don’t wanna know about that,” he smiles despite himself. “It’s grizzly.”

Laughing, she raises her eyebrows and promises, “I do want to know!”

“Alright, I’ll give you a little preview.” Chris finishes the glass he’s wiping down, sets it on the rack, and looks up at her, grinning but serious. He nods down at the plate of french fries she’s been picking at. “You gonna eat the rest of that?”

She shakes her head ‘no,’ and pushes the plate forward an inch, offering.

Chris nods, knotting his eyebrows.

“Well, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to tell some bad jokes, you’re going to throw these at me, and then I’m going to cry,” he says.

The girl cracks up even more, shaking her head.

“You didn’t!” she exclaims.

Chris finally laughs a little. He groans and then says, “Oh, I did.”

“That’s pretty bad.” She studies him for a second, and then asks, “What’s your name?”

Wiping his hands off, Chris sets the dirty rag down, extends one hand to shake, and says, “Chris.”

“Hayley,” she grins back, returning his handshake solidly.

Chris smiles at her again and picks up his dish rag.

“Well, I’m a very busy man here,” he says, pointing behind him to a rack of booze that needs lifting. “So you’ll have to excuse me.”

With a smirk, Hayley picks up her beer, and leaves him to it.

~

Something weird happens after that.

People start telling Chris he’s funny. Often. Every night. On Fridays and Saturdays, he gets a group of people hanging out around the bar, buying drinks and tipping well and laughing at every joke he makes.

It gets back to Mitzi after two weeks.

“Great,” she smirks, the night she calls him into her office. “Now I gotta get a new bartender.”

~

The morning after Mitzi books him back on the main stage, Chris wakes up and promptly falls out of bed.

“AHH,” he shouts, halfway down to the floor.

He lands with a hard thump, and brings down the blankets with him.

Back up on his mattress, Sebastian is comfortably reclined on the other side of Chris’s bed. Before Chris took his trip to the floor, he caught a glimpse of that wide grin, and two little red horns poking out of Sebastian’s hair.

“Morning,” Sebastian greets, as Chris sits up with a glare on his face and one hand clutching his chest.

Chris gets to his feet, and wraps the sheet around himself even though he’s already wearing underwear.

“What are you doing here?” He eyes the horns. Those are new.

Beatific, Sebastian smiles back.

“I’m in a pickle,” he says.

Chris narrows his eyes. “Is this some kind of trick?”

“What am I, a leprechaun?” Sebastian asks, rolling his eyes as he climbs his way out of bed. Chris watches the movement of his black boot against the bright white linen of his blanket. His mom got him that for Christmas. On his feet, Sebastian holds one hand out, and says levelly, “It’s not a trick.”

Adjusting his sheet, Chris clears his throat.

“Are you… are you hurt?” he asks, raising one eyebrow curiously.

Sebastian stares at him, mouth dropping open for a second.

“Jesus, you are a trip,” he says, and then, “Ow!” as he shakes his hand.

Confused, Chris takes a step closer, and peers at Sebastian’s hand. The skin is all red and - well, burnt.

“Fucker,” Sebastian swears. He looks at his hand and then tips his head back to yell up at the ceiling, “Give me a break! It slipped out!”

Right. Guess all those old bible tales about holy water are true, too.

Chris reaches out, and takes Sebastian’s hand in both of his. He’s - hot, his skin is warm to the touch, like he’s been baking in the sun. Or, you know. Hellfire.

“That hurt?” he asks, gingerly touching the pad of his thumb to Sebastian’s sizzled skin. He looks up into Sebastian’s face, expecting to see a grimace or some kind of tell towards the pain. He’s surprised to see Sebastian staring back at him, eyes wide.

Sebastian licks his bottom lip, and says, “I’ll live.”

“Well,” Chris frowns. He lets Sebastian’s hand drop. “I have a band-aid, if you want one.”

“Noted,” Sebastian grins, clearly back to his old self.

Chris rolls his eyes. “Are you actually here for a reason?”

“Yes!” Sebastian exclaims. “I have a proposition for you.”

“A proposition,” Chris says flatly.

This is probably where Chris should tell the devil to get the hell out, and come back for him when his twenty years are up, but there’s something - some teeny tiny little part of Chris’s brain that is curious about Sebastian - that holds him back.

“I might even consider it a proposal,” he grins. “See, I got lots of souls.”

“Lucky you,” Chris intones.

Sebastian holds both hands out, palms up, and says, “Hey, I’m offering you the chance of a lifetime here, but if you don’t want it…”

“Because I know so much about it already,” Chris snaps, eyes going squinty.

That makes Sebastian laugh. His eyebrows raise up his forehead, and his eyes get real bright and crystal clear.

“Listen.” He’s still trying to fight back a laugh. He opens his mouth, and goes to say something else, and then hesitates and breathes out through another laugh, “I can’t believe I’m doing this. I can offer you a payment plan.”

Alright, now Chris’s interest is piqued. He lays off the grimace.

“What, to get my soul back?” he asks, curious.

It seems like a good idea to ask a lot of questions before you start tacking on additional contracts and clauses with the devil. Chris doesn’t know if there’s a lawyer on planet earth that could help him with this one.

“You catch on fast,” Sebastian grins. “There’s a twenty year balance on your soul, and the only way to clear the debt is spending eternity in hell when I come for you. Or, you can give me something else, get back soul equity, and walk free once the balance is paid back.”

This sounds way too good to be true. 

“What’s the catch,” Chris frowns. “What do you want in return?”

Sebastian arches an eyebrow to the sheet still knotted around Chris’s hips.

“I have more souls than I know what to do with. What good is one more gonna do me? And anyway, yours isn’t even that good.”

“Hey!” Chris exclaims, defensive… even though it’s true.

Shrugging, Sebastian sits down on Chris’s bed again.

“So?” he asks, looking up at Chris from underneath one arched eyebrow.

Chris licks his lips, and looks into the face of the devil. If the point of the devil is to be everything Chris has ever wanted, god, did Sebastian ever get it right. He holds Sebastian’s gaze steady - cold, calculating eyes, familiar, now, in the way they don’t quite look human - and bites his bottom lip.

“Kitten, you’re killing me here,” Sebastian breathes, both hands reaching to hold onto either of Chris’s forearms.

That’s a funny feeling. Chris kind of likes that.

He doesn’t know much about fucking, or - or anything like that, really - but this might be something he can do. Maybe he’d even do it without getting his shitty consolation prize soul back at the end of it.

“Fine,” he says, and even as the word tumbles out of Chris’s mouth, it doesn’t seem real.

Sebastian grins, a real wide shark-grin that stretches from one side of his mouth to the other, and then curls up at the corners. The hair on the backs of Chris’s arms stand up, and his stomach dips in excitement.

“So,” Chris says, as they continue to watch each other. “Are we supposed to kiss now, or something?”

Before he knows what’s happening, Sebastian is back up on his feet.

“Or something,” he murmurs.

The air gets hot. Chris takes a breath in, and it feels like Florida in the dead of summer, a low-hanging heat that stays with you all day. His eyes close half way as Sebastian steps close, and their open mouths bump together.

Sebastian is still watching him, too, eyes barely open slits. The moment he presses their lips together, Chris hears a sizzle, and those now-familiar tendrils of smoke begin to snake out from all directions. Chris feels them wrapping around his bare ankles and brushing against the side of his arm. They don’t feel dangerous.

They kind of feel like a hug.

He doesn’t mean for it to happen, but he makes a noise. It’s been - it’s been a long time since he kissed someone, a time that extends far further back than the last time he had sex.

The sound dies in his throat. He makes it die, fast. During the war, if you weren’t quiet, you got caught, and - before that, when Chris was a teenager - getting found out would have been the worst thing. Making any kind of noise was strictly off-limits: forbidden.

When Sebastian laughs against his mouth and reaches both hands up to tug Chris close, he feels the surprise swell up inside him quick and hard, so sudden it brings tears to his eyes.

“Alright,” he manages, pulling away suddenly.

He ducks his head down. He wasn’t expecting that to feel like getting smacked across the head with a two-by-four. His heart is beating so fast, he can barely stand it.

In his whole life, he’s kissed three people. He remembers them all for different reasons: the first, a girl in the second grade. She pushed him in a mud puddle and then kissed him to make him stop crying. The second, when he was a teenager. She was the first and only girl he ever dated: volunteering for Nam seemed like less of a hurdle than continuing down that road.

The third, the first man he had sex with. He hadn’t realized kissing wasn’t allowed, and got a black eye for his efforts.

Chris’s hand is shaking as he loses the bedsheet, and reaches for his jeans instead.

“I’m not in the business of making people do shit they don’t want to do, kitten. The original deal is always on the table,” Sebastian tells him.

Chris shakes his head and tugs his jeans on.

“It’s not that,” he says. Who figured the devil would be so ethical?

He stands up, and turns to face Sebastian as he buttons his fly up. Sebastian is giving him an eyebrow that says he doesn’t believe a word coming out of Chris’s mouth. 

“It’s a lot to think about,” Chris finally frowns. Now he’s getting mad again. He puts his hands on his hips and grimaces back at Sebastian’s less than believing expression. That puts a little curl back in Sebastian’s mouth. “Don’t you have shit to do?”

Sebastian rolls his lips into his mouth, and shakes his head no.

“One of the perks of working for yourself,” he grins. “You get to set your own hours.”

Perfect. Chris picks up the t-shirt he was wearing yesterday, and tugs it on.

“I have work tonight,” he frowns, as Sebastian settles back on his bed, stretching his long legs out and serenely crossing his boots at the heel.

Sebastian grins back, wide and devastating, and pats the spot beside him.

Chris fights himself for a minute, toes flexing against the ground as his body goes to move but then halts when his head tells him to stay. He ends up sighing, and scratching the back of his head as he rounds the side of the bed.

“Just for one minute,” he allows, gingerly sitting on the edge of the mattress.

~

Being an acquaintance of the devil does have its perks.

Sebastian conjures up a brand new color television to sit on the already-there dresser at the end of Chris’s bed. He also spruces up the place, but just a little bit: dark curtains over the windows to cut out some of the light, a new blanket for the bed because, try as Chris might, he can’t make his thermostat match Hell.

Sure, he doesn’t approve of bank fraud, but a little light invocation never hurt anyone.

“Oh this is a good one.” Sebastian preemptively laughs.

On the television, the theme to As The World Turns plays on.

“You like this stuff?” Chris asks, turning his head so he can see Sebastian’s profile.

They’re laying in bed like a married couple, or something: Chris is actively trying not to think about it. Every time Sebastian moves his right foot, it bumps into Chris’s left. If Chris shifted over just a few inches, their upper arms would press together.

It’s more intimate than he’s ever been with another person.

“Love it,” Sebastian reviews, genuinely tickled.

Chris squints a little, trying to figure out if Sebastian is pulling his chain, and then turns back, so he’s looking at the television screen instead of Sebastian’s profile. He ends up looking at their feet, instead. Sebastian’s still wearing his full get-up, from the leather boots to the black jeans and the little red horns. He looks ridiculous, but then again, Chris is the one who can’t stop looking.

“What’s with the horns?” he finds himself asking before he can stop.

There are still echoes of the grin Sebastian got when the daytime soap started lingering on his face.

“They do it for you, huh?” He turns his head to wink at Chris.

Chris shrugs one shoulder. “Why’d you get em?”

“Propaganda, mostly. When I was born, I had wings.” Sebastian’s mouth briefly curves downwards. “What are you gonna do?”

Wings, jeez. Chris imagines trying to fit those into his apartment.

“I like the horns,” he says.

Sebastian’s expression flickers to something hot and wicked in an instant. Even though Chris doesn’t know much about flirting, he knows what that face means. He feels his own stomach twist in anticipation.

“Yeah?” Sebastian smirks, fingers curling against his own stomach. “What else do you like?”

Chris jumps as the mattress sizzles and suddenly pops into low flames.

“Ahh!” he exclaims - a kneejerk reaction - before he realizes the fire doesn’t hurt. He stares down at his own legs, heart pounding in his chest, as his brain tries to parse the fire licking at the fabric of his jeans. Once he realizes he’s not in immediate physical danger, he turns his head to boggle over at Sebastian, “What the hell are you doing?!”

Still reclined against the pillows, relaxed as ever, Sebastian lets his eyebrows drift up.

“You don’t like it?” he asks, innocent.

Chris actually - it doesn’t matter if he likes it. It’s a… it’s a fire hazard and…

“Just,” he frowns, pausing. He moves his leg a little, testing it out, surprised and maybe a little fascinated by the way it doesn’t hurt. It just feels warm and good. Stupidly, he says, “I should burn.”

“It’s a part of me,” Sebastian shrugs; just another day. After a second of thought, he looks over at Chris and adds, “Wait til you see the lake.”

Right.

“The lake,” Chris nods.

He turns back to look at the television screen.

There’s no way to know for sure, but Chris is pretty sure that was an invitation to visit Hell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll be lurking around tumblr tonight answering questions! If you wanna hit me up, [come say hay](http://sidnihoudini.tumblr.com)!!


	3. Chapter 3

Chris doesn’t know how it happens, but he starts making friends at The Comedy Store.

There’s - there’s something about it, this new way of living. Chris has never been this charming in his life. Even though the deal he signed with Sebastian was only to get on the main stage at The Store, there are a hundred side benefits that come along with it.

The guy who replaces Chris at the bar is a Nam vet, too. They become fast friends.

In just two weeks, Chris’s entire world has changed.

~

“What do you mean, you’re quitting the factory?” his mom exclaims.

It’s Sunday evening, and he’s eating his usual microwave dinner. He looks down at the mint colored plastic, and drags the tines of his fork through the small allowance of peas he’s been provided by Mr. Hungry-man.

“I mean I’m quitting the factory.” His shrug turns into a shoulder hunch.

Across the small kitchen table - cherry red vinyl, the newest addition to his mother’s interior decorating spree - his mother shakes her head, and lights a cigarette.

“If this is because of…” Chris watches, dumbfounded, as it becomes clear his mother doesn’t know how to finish that sentence. She taps the side of her head with the same hand holding her cigarette, and then mimes having a screw loose. “You should just come home, sweetheart.”

His eyebrows knot as he stares at her, bewildered.

“It’s not that,” he finally manages, voice disbelieving. Shaking his head, he drops his fork, and then rubs his face. Grimacing, he says, “I can’t explain it to you right now.”

She smokes her cigarette as Chris knuckles at his eyes, and pulls his bottom lip with his thumb and index finger.

“This is about your brother, isn’t it?” Her mind sounds made up as she lights her next cigarette with the one still in her mouth. Chris’s expression tightens immediately. His eyes and cheekbones flinch as he grimaces at her. “He’s a bad influence on you.”

Chris boggles at her for a second longer, and then says, “This has nothing to do with Scott.”

Now is not the time to bring up the fact that she - neither of his parents - have the right to bring his brother up at all, but god, it’s hard, biting that back.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” she sighs.

Chris isn’t sure if it’s a coincidence or not - he’s pretty sure it’s a coincidence - but the minute the words are uttered from her mouth, a clap of thunder booms overhead.

“I don’t want anything from you,” Chris grits out. “I just thought you should know.”

She waves her hand at him, dismissive, and closes her eyes as she sinks into her cigarette.

~

His parents really can get bent.

It hasn’t been easy, this - everything. Sometimes Chris feels like he was disadvantaged from the start. Fine, beautiful, right up until the moment puberty hit. Thank god he knew better than to open his child mouth when he realized he liked the way Clark Gable looked in his suit pants.

Chris smokes an entire cigarette in the twenty feet between the stoop to his parents house and the door of his car.

He was born that - this - way, and he knows there’s no way to fix it. He tried, looking at those black and whites of Marilyn Monroe and the dirty cartoons all the boys kept under their pillows during the war. The only thing Chris ever noticed about those pictures was the way the fabric of the ladies dresses were cut.

There was that, and then the war, and the blackout year that followed that.

Chris drives back to Los Angeles in silence. He doesn’t even bother turning the radio on. The orange blossom groves turn to unused farmland and then to the ghettos just outside of town.

He doesn’t realize he’s driving in the direction of Pacific Avenue until he’s already there.

Even though he’s been around Los Angeles long enough to see all the sights, it’s a rare day that has him venturing further west than Wilshire. There’s a little mom-and-pop store set up on one of the busier corners; Chris reads the sign out front that says _BURGERS - ORIENTAL FOOD - CIGARETTES_ as he idles at a red light.

By the time he parks at Marina Del Rey, the sun is setting low over the water, sky purple and orange as the last light of the day burns off.

He walks along the painted red fence of a skatepark, built around two inground swimming pools that look like they’ve seen better days. Despite late hours, the bowls are full of young kids - mostly boys, but Chris sees one girl with long red hair tailing behind her.

The skatepark leads him to a set of steps, and then along the exterior of a wooden tiki house. By the time he’s made it down to the dock, he’s surprised he managed to find his way at all.

 _The Underworld_ is still floating right where Chris last saw it. Now that he’s here of his own volition, he notices things he didn’t see last time - like the 669 house number hanging above the doorbell.

Without thinking, Chris reaches up and touches the 9. It moves easily, too loose on its nail. Chris is righting the 9 back to a 6 when the door swings open.

He jumps, caught with one hand still on the 9. Scarlett grins up at him, eyes big and lined with something black and smokey.

“Hi, stranger,” she purrs.

Chris freezes.

“Uh.” He lowers his hand. “Hello.”

If possible, her smile gets even sharper and more serene.

“Selling cookies?” she asks, arching one eyebrow.

Oh, jesus. Chris feels his cheeks getting all hot. Whatever good juju came along with this now-he’s-funny thing does not extend to Scarlett.

“Just here to see, uh.” She presses her tongue to the inside of her cheek, teeth perfectly white against her pink mouth, and watches him. Chris tips his head back, stares up at the ever-darker evening sky, and bites out, “Is Sebastian around?”

The door quickly swings all the way open. By the time Chris lowers his gaze back to reality, Scarlett has cut him some slack: she holds one arm out, inviting him in.

“He’s in the library,” she says.

It feels a lot like being invited into Dracula’s lair. Chris takes a step inside. 

He’s got one arm out of his jean jacket when he hears the gruesome twin snarl of two dogs - Sebastian’s dogs. The fine hairs on the back of his neck stand up as his brain parses the sound, and he swallows tight, swiftly ready to meet his maker in the face of such sudden horror.

And then both dogs abruptly stop snarling, and start wagging their tails instead.

“We don’t get many visitors,” Scarlett deadpans behind him.

“Hey, it’s alright, hi, pal, hi bud,” Chris tells them, bent over as he pets one of their heads, and then the other. He doesn’t know who is who - they’re almost identical, and they keep weaving inside one another as they excitedly circle Chris’s legs.

He laughs and moves down into a kneel as one of them jumps up and almost knocks him backwards.

Now this, he’s pretty sure, is what heaven is like - not the devil’s houseboat.

“Cute,” Scarlett smirks. She stands to the side and watches as Chris gets back to his feet. They’re definitely dogs, but they feel strange - old worldly beastly - to his hands. He looks over at Scarlett, a little embarrassed, and watches as she raises an eyebrow and nods down the hall with a, “Shall we?”

Chris nods and extends one hand - lead the way.

The hallway is the same as it was the first time Chris was here. Scarlett walks ahead of him, pretending not to notice the way he peers in every doorway they pass by.

When they get to the end of the hall, she cracks open both double doors, pushing them to either side as she breezes into Sebastian’s office. This is familiar, too - this is where he signed Sebastian’s Red Book.

Instead of leading Chris to the mile-long wooden table he sat at before, she points him to the circular stairway sitting almost hidden in the corner of the room. He noticed the open second level last time, but he sure hadn’t seen that.

“Adieu, adieu, adieu,” Scarlett singsongs.

Chris looks back at her, but she just smirks at him, and pulls the double doors closed.

Alright, well. Chris brushes his palms off on his jeans, and heads for the stairs.

They’re old-timey, brass and copper woven into each other to create something formidable and strange. Even though the stairs only join the main floor to the library mezzanine, Chris quickly feels as though he’s been climbing forever.

He peers over the railing, and swears. The wood floor he left behind only a few minutes ago is now at least a couple of stories below him.

Jeepers, he’s never been very good with heights. He holds onto the railing a little tighter, and then squints up to the top of the stairs, trying to judge how much further he has to go.

“Come on,” he says to himself, moving again. “Confidence.”

The second half goes as fast as the first, but the air changes - and this, Chris has breathed this kind of air before. A little damp. Cool. Jungle air.

By the time he reaches the top of the steps, he’s squirming from sense memory.

He leaves one hand on the railing as he follows it deeper into the mezzanine. From the ground floor all he’d been able to see were the tall bookcases stacked with ancient looking, skin-bound books; now that he’s up here, he notices the details. Sconces made from the same metal as the stairs, but twisted into ghoulish, horror-stricken faces, with dark green vines growing wherever they can stand.

Some vines have flowers, but Chris doesn’t dare touch the poisonous looking blooms.

He finds Sebastian beyond the row of bookcases seen from the ground floor. And then he blurts, “AHH!” when he feels something slither over his foot.

Sebastian abruptly looks up from where he’s standing behind his desk, stooped over piles and piles of paper. The way the wall sconces throw light make him look extra devilish, made up of nothing but sharp cheekbones and bright eyes.

“Sorry,” Chris breathes, clutching his chest.

The neutral expression on Sebastian’s face curls up into a knowing smirk.

“Salutations, kitten,” he says, voice rough. He sets down the piece of paper he was reading when Chris bumbled in, and looks him over from head to toe. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Chris brushes his chest off, feeling itchy, and raises his eyebrows.

“Just in the neighborhood.” Is the floor moving? He takes a pinched breath. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

When he looks up from the floor and back over to Sebastian, he almost falls over backwards. Yes, now he’s certain the floors are pulsating, and so are the walls, and that’s - that’s a snake, casually draped over Sebastian’s bare shoulder.

“A snake,” he says feebly.

Sebastian seems to notice it for the first time. He reaches up, fingers sliding along the length of its black and gold skin, before he gently pulls it forward and away from his arm.

“They won’t hurt you.” Chris watches, dumbfounded, as Sebastian lets it wrap itself around his wrist and forearm. When Chris doesn’t immediately reply, Sebastian looks up at him, eyebrow arched - a grin. “They know better.”

Swallowing, Chris puts on a brave face.

“Uh-huh,” he nods. He tries to ignore the feeling of another slithering over his foot.

Sebastian watches him for a second longer, amused, before he bends over and lets the snake move from his hand to the ground. As he stands up, he sibilates something in a language that Chris doesn’t understand - it’s otherworldly.

Whatever it is, Chris watches, stunned, as the snakes around his feet make room, giving him a noticeable amount of space.

“Did you…” he says, trailing off.

Sebastian doesn’t answer him, but he does wave Chris over.

Me? Chris wants to ask, but that doesn’t make sense, because as far as he can tell - and, aside from the snakes - it’s only he and Sebastian up here.

“Disgusting,” Sebastian says to nobody in particular, shaking a piece of paper out.

Chris watches as a lock of hair falls to the ground.

As he crosses the room, the canopy of snakes around his feet move, noticeably mindful of whatever Sebastian hissed at them. By the time Chris reaches Sebastian at his desk, he feels like he should apologize to the little guys for judging them so harshly.

“Everyone’s gotta make it complicated,” Sebastian grouses. Chris leans his butt against the edge of Sebastian’s desk, hands hung together between his thighs, and watches interestedly as Sebastian empties another letter of nail clippings. “Who said romance is dead? Ugh.”

Sebastian sets the letter down, and writes something in his ledger with red ink.

“Am I in there?” Chris asks, leaning over a little so he can see. “Are those souls?”

Reaching for another page, Sebastian says, “Sorry, angel. Official hell business.”

“What’s the book for?” he asks instead, switching tracks.

Sebastian’s fingers hover over the parchment-looking page of the book. It’s the same one Chris signed when he bound himself to the original contract, but he hadn’t thought to ask questions then.

“Gotta keep track of business somehow,” Sebastian smirks.

That makes sense. Chris watches as Sebastian gets back to it, alternating between reading the summoning letters he’s been written, and recording names and dates in his ledger.

It’s decidedly unglamorous work.

Chris’s attention wanders from the book to Sebastian’s body.

He’s only wearing suit pants - no belt - so they sit low on his hips. Chris feels his face heat up, jeez, those are really low. If he bent over at an opportune moment his butt might show. 

As though Sebastian is reading his mind, he squats down beside the desk to rummage through a dusty looking records box. Oh, god. Chris’s eyes snap from Sebastian’s lower - low, low, low - back, and the muscles that make it flex, right up to the ceiling.

If he were in any other company, he would bless himself with the sign of the cross.

Chris knows better. He was taught better. But he still can’t help himself from taking one last look, even though the guilt might eat him alive.

That’s a… that’s a great butt. He swallows, adam’s apple bobbing in his throat.

“Have you eaten?” Sebastian asks, distracted with what he’s looking for.

“Uh.” Chris tears his eyes away from Sebastian’s butt. “Not really.”

Sebastian stands up with a tan-colored folder, and a shit-eating grin on his face.

“I know a great place,” is all he says, reaching for his jacket.

~

Chris stands outside the tiki hut with both hands in his pockets.

“It’s… homey,” he affords, a little wary of the boarded up windows and spray-painted exterior.

Sebastian laughs, and puts his weight into unlocking and sliding open the front door. It feels like Chris should be looking over one shoulder for cops, or something. He peers around nervously one last time, and then follows Sebastian in.

“Are you sure we’re allowed to…” he starts, trailing off.

It’s a tiki bar, yes, but it sure is unlike any other Chris has seen before. Stunned, he watches as Sebastian walks behind the bar, and starts flipping lights on. First, the ceiling lights up with stars, but the indoor night sky looks better - even more real - than the one outside.

Sebastian shoots Chris a crinkled up ‘sorry’ face, and apologizes, “This might be loud.”

Before Chris has a chance to parse the warning, another round of lights flip on, and then, the loudest, most booming voice Chris has ever heard in his life blasts through the small bar interior. It’s so all-consuming he feels the sound vibrate through his gut.

“What is that!” he blurts, covering both ears.

Still behind the counter, Sebastian rolls his eyes, turns to face the back of the bar, and starts yelling something in another language Chris doesn’t understand. Chris has no idea what’s going on - until he does - and then he startles backwards, falling directly into a wall.

At the back end of the bar, as tall as two stories, four ancient-looking faces are built into the stucco, mouths moving just like the animatronic Mount Rushmore faces at Disney World. One of them seems very fired up - he and Sebastian yell at each other for a few long moments as Chris’s heart tries to beat out of his chest.

“God of War,” Sebastian mutters, as their argument comes to a close. “Thinks he knows everything.”

Chris tries to ease up on the grip he’s got around his own boob. He watches, still on the floor, as Sebastian pulls two glasses down and starts pouring drinks.

Once the drinks are done - topped with little umbrellas, and everything - Sebastian walks over to a booth, a rum cocktail in each hand.

“What are you still doing over there?” he asks, pulling a chair out with one foot hooked around its bamboo leg. “I made you a drink.”

Before he sits down, he holds the drink out to Chris with a wide grin.

“...yeah.” Chris unknots his eyebrows, and then knots them again. He sets his hand on the floor instead of over his junk. Then he casts one more weary eye over to the Tiki faces, and gets to his feet.

Sebastian flips through the menu as Chris brushes his ass off and walks over.

“Was that…” Chris eyes the now silent Tiki people warily. “What was that?”

With a grimace, Sebastian very gingerly flips to the last page of the menu, and loudly catches Chris up.

“We USED TO HAVE an arrangement,” he explains, pointedly looking at the back of the room. Chris awkwardly takes a seat across from Sebastian. “But SOMEONE can’t get it through their GIGANTIC HEAD that human sacrifices are no longer APPROPRIATE in the twentieth century!”

Before the last word is even out of Sebastian’s mouth, thunder and lightning boom loudly overhead - completely inside the ceiling of the restaurant - as the angry Tiki face yells something else.

Sebastian’s eyes flip to black for a split second.

“What did he say!” Chris exclaims, unable to help himself.

“He said,” Sebastian grits out, “his head is almost as big as mine.”

Then he sticks his middle finger up, pointed directly at the Tiki face.

Chris had no idea this kind of old world drama existed.

“We can go somewhere else,” he offers, aiming for discreet as he picks up the menu and holds it to the right, so his mouth is covered. “There’s a great taco place on-”

The Tiki face to the left of the one mad at Sebastian yells something.

Chris freezes, and turns slightly to peer over his menu.

“It’s fine,” Sebastian promises, back to the old razzle-dazzle. He smiles at Chris.

Frowning, Chris looks at Sebastian’s expression for a second, and then asks, slow, “I’m not the… human sacrifice. Am I?”

“I’m not a monster, kitten,” Sebastian laughs, going back to the menu. He eyes Chris over the top of the page. “And I wouldn’t waste good food.”

That’s… that’s nice. Chris smiles at the compliment, and flips open his own menu.

~

An hour later, Chris is a little tipsy as they walk back to the boat.

“Anyway,” Sebastian finishes, as Chris drunkenly flicks his cigarette butt over the railing and into the water. “He’s been around since before the world was created, and he never lets me forget it.”

Chris raises his eyebrows as he thinks about that.

“What’s the difference between human sacrifice and selling a soul?” he asks, following behind Sebastian as they walk down the dock to the houseboat.

Snorting, Sebastian answers over one shoulder, “War captives and intestine removal, for starters.”

That sounds bad.

“Oh. Well… how are you gonna kill me?” Chris asks, curious.

Sebastian steps down into the stoop of his houseboat, and looks at Chris seriously. In the glow of the night sky over the water, Sebastian’s eyes look impossibly human.

“I don’t kill people,” he says. “I give them life.”

They look at each other for a long moment, and then Sebastian opens the door.

~

Chris has been in a lot of strange places in his life, but this takes the cake.

He follows Sebastian along the edge of the boat to the bow. As he shuffles along the edge of the deck, he tries not to look down at Cabal and Baby Cinnamon in the water. It turns out they’re terrifying when wet: truly beastly-looking and strange.

By the time he drops down into the little sitting area at the bow of the boat, he’s ready for another drink.

“So,” Sebastian starts, flopping back into the couch. It’s a circle shape, and curves around the entire edge of the bow. Chris secretly thinks it looks very comfortable: a nice place to take a nap in the sun. “Most people don’t agree to a life in hell without an end.”

Chris is jerked out of his short-lived fantasy of wearing short white shorts and a pair of gold sunglasses under the cloudless skies. He looks at Sebastian worriedly.

“Is that a problem?” he asks.

If the devil is going to start giving him attitude about an already done deal, Chris knows Yash has got a six-pack waiting with his name on it.

“No,” Sebastian shrugs. “Just unusual.”

Unusual. Chris has never been described as anything remarkable in his life: always perfectly average, right down to his hair color and eyes.

“What do people usually do?”

Sebastian shrugs again, and rests both arms along the back of the couch. He’s still not wearing a t-shirt: just his leather jacket and black jeans, like the lead singers of the bands Chris sometimes watches on Carson.

“They never take the first offer. They always want something better,” he says, picking at his fingernails. Chris frowns. “It’s always about their family. ‘Please, I have a son, I have a wife.’ Twenty years isn’t long enough to see your daughter grow up. Or so I hear.”

“Right,” Chris says weakly. “Well.” He pauses. The pause stretches for much longer than he’d originally meant it to. In the water, the dogs growl and splash. “Burning in hell has always been my final stop.”

After a pause, Sebastian replies, “That’s vague and sad.”

“I… haven’t lived a virtuous life,” Chris explains. He tries to keep it ambiguous.

Sebastian counters, “That makes two of us, sister,” and raises a hand to his chest. He touches the tip of one finger to his nipple and lets it sizzle.

Even though Chris feels that crater full of sorrow familiar and present in his chest, he can’t help but let his mouth stretch into a smile. He covers his face with one hand, but it’s too late, he’s grinning and then a laugh sneaks out.

“Yeah, well,” he shrugs, still laughing a little bit. “You wanted to know.”

“Heaven isn’t the paradise they sell it as, you know,” Sebastian says. “God is a real particular bitch.”

That… Chris pauses. And then manages, “I don’t think you can say that.”

“All I’m saying, angel, is nobody’s perfect,” Sebastian says patiently.

Chris frowns and finally takes a seat beside Sebastian on the couch. When Chris sits a bit closer than strictly innocent, Sebastian looks over interestedly.

“I volunteered to fight in Vietnam,” he says. “Before that, all the work experience I had was selling oranges door-to-door.”

Sebastian’s lips curve up into a soft smile. He teases, “Sinner.”

“I guess I didn’t have a permit,” Chris frowns, remembering. When Sebastian laughs and falls over, burying his face in Chris’s arm, Chris smiles. Then he says, quiet and for the first time outloud, “Nobody forced me to pick up that gun. I killed innocent people; civilian people.”

Still pressed face-first into Chris’s side, Sebastian stays quiet.

“And then there’s…” Chris trails off, squinting into the distance, feet shuffling on the deck uncomfortably. This is a pretty ironic thing to say with Sebastian as close as he is right now. “I knew, uh. You know. I knew, even as a kid.”

Sebastian shifts until he’s encroached on Chris’s space even further. He flips himself around, and lets his head rest against Chris’s thigh. Chris, frozen in place by the sudden intimacy, leaves both hands on the sofa cushions.

“I didn’t make that up, you know,” Sebastian tells him. Chris’s eyebrows knot. “All that bad stuff - segregation? The bar raids? That’s all you guys.”

Chris frowns. His fingers bump into the sleeve of Sebastian’s leather jacket as he moves his hand. He doesn’t know what to say to that - not really - so he just doesn’t say anything at all. That’s his whole story, anyway; at no point along Chris’s gay, war veteran life, did he ever think he’d be punching his card in for Heaven.

“Disco,” Sebastian muses, eyes twinkling as he looks up at the stars and takes a trip down memory lane. “The tambourine. Goats. Anal sex. That’s all me.”

After a long pause, Chris squints his eyes and asks, “The tambourine?”

“It was the only thing that sounded good with a lute,” Sebastian frowns.

Chris laughs, sharp and sudden.

“Right,” he agrees, relaxing back against the couch. He looks over at Sebastian, and teases, “That makes sense.”

Sebastian grins back at him, charmed.

~

Chris falls asleep in the early hours of the morning.

He doesn’t remember dozing off, and only realizes what’s happened when he jerks awake under the bright morning sun after a seagull squawks nearby. Disoriented, Chris pushes himself up onto one elbow and peers around. Still on the same couch they were sitting on last night. That seems promising.

The last thing he remembers is laying on his back and staring up at the stars. Sebastian was - what was it. Chris yawns, and tries to remember. Something about how the night skies in Hell are built from constellations: all twelve zodiac signs, visible for two hours each throughout the night.

“I might not have a birthday,” Sebastian said, “But I do like that lion guy.”

Still disoriented from being startled awake, Chris rubs his face, and slowly shuffles into a sitting position. 

He’s contemplating his life when Scarlett’s head pops up out of nowhere.

“Morning, sailor,” she grins. Her hair is up in fifties housewife hot rollers: the kind that Chris’s own mother wears. When Chris just stares back, she adds, “I’ve got pancakes!”

By the time Chris has navigated himself inside, he is ready for some breakfast.

Sebastian is sitting at the kitchen table in an undershirt and strangely fitted, striped boxer shorts. Even from here, Chris can see they draw in narrow at the waist, sitting a few inches higher on Sebastian’s hips than they should.

“Those are…” he trails off, thinking.

Leaning forward, Sebastian stretches across the full breakfast spread, and stubs his cigarette out in a little bowl of milk. He raises his eyebrows and looks up at Chris as he says, “Nothing beats a fig leaf.”

Scarlett appears at Chris’s elbow, dressed in a fuzzy pink bathrobe. Chris, mouth hanging a little bit open, looks between the two of them. She grins back at him from behind her mint-colored face mask.

“Are you two always putting on a show?” he asks, genuinely befuddled. “Why don’t you just take a drama class?”

There’s a fizzle of energy, and then Chris is looking at a more normal looking Sebastian and Scarlett: Sebastian back in his black jeans, and Scarlett in navy shorts and a t-shirt.

“You’re no fun, kitten.”

“Spoilsport,” Scarlett adds, sticking her tongue out.

Chris squints at both of them, but does accept the plate of pancakes he’s handed.

~

After breakfast, Chris takes the long way home.

He cruises around Venice for a while. He doesn’t know this neighborhood well - or, at all, really - but that doesn’t stop him from wondering what other secrets are housed behind the doors of that derelict warehouse, or the abandoned corner store on Olive Ave.

If he told anyone what he’s seen over the last 24 hours, he’d be committed.

Once he’s back in his own neighborhood, he stops to pick up something to eat later, and a pack of cigarettes.

“Thanks, Yash,” he smiles, taking the handles of the plastic bag.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for your feedback on part two! It's looking like there are going to be more than six chapters, mostly because it's way longer than I remember it being when I was writing it haha.
> 
> As usual I'll be [hanging out on tumblr](http://sidnihoudini.tumblr.com) answering asks and messages tonight.
> 
> See you Sunday for part four, wooo.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's devil Sunday! Things are getting spicy!

He doesn’t see Sebastian much over the next couple days.

The crowd is good tonight: Chris has them on his side. They’re laughing at his jokes and clapping when he pauses, and so far, nobody has booed for him to get off stage. He even gets the bartender - Mackie - a round of applause when he runs a fresh beer up at Chris’s request.

Chris is grinning, pausing after a punchline with his hand wrapped tight around the microphone, when he realizes Sebastian is in the audience.

“Hey!” he calls, a little tipsy as he raises one hand up to block the spotlight, and points his microphone pointer finger at Sebastian. It’s hard to see with the - the fucking light in his face - but he’s pretty sure Sebastian grins back. Chris laughs and adds, “That’s great.”

The audience rolls with it, letting Chris coast on their ebbing laughter.

“Do you have a drink?” Chris asks, still holding his hand out, fingers splayed like a starfish and doing absolutely nothing to stop the light from hitting his eyes. “Can someone get him a beer?”

“Me too!” Scarlett shouts from somewhere in the haze to Sebastian’s right.

Chris laughs and nods, and finally drops his hand.

He and Sebastian share one last moment of eye contact - surprising in its sudden, strange, heat - before Chris looks away, delighted, and launches into another joke.

~

After the set, Chris is absolutely unsurprised to see Sebastian is charming the whole table.

This having-friends thing is still new to Chris. He hasn’t seen any of them beyond the edges of the parking lot, but after every set, everyone buys a pitcher and Mitzi drops off a platter of nachos on the house.

“The stories I have about this guy,” Paul cackles, tilting a thumb in Chris’s direction before he pauses to navigate a gigantic triangle of cheese into his mouth. As he wipes his fingers off on a tiny napkin, he raises his eyebrows and adds, “I swear, the night he knocked down the curtain, his face was as red as the devil’s dick.”

Chris surreptitiously looks over at Sebastian’s lap.

From here it… you know. Looks pretty regular. He’d probably get a better idea of what’s under there if Sebastian was wearing a light fabric instead of jean, but that’s - that’s a fine silhouette. Chris gets the general idea.

He must be broadcasting “I’m thinking about cock” loud and clear, because Sebastian’s hand sneaks away from the table, and to the seat bench between them not long after. Chris clears his throat, terrified and exhilarated, and tries to watch out of the corner of his eye as Sebastian lifts his hand to rest on his own leg.

As soon as Sebastian’s fingers settle over the curve of his thigh - packed nice and tight in those jeans - Chris jerks back to life, and reaches for his beer.

In the booth beside him, Sebastian’s participation in the table conversation hasn’t waned, even for a moment. He keeps it heavy on the charm, and sends sly smiles and targeted laughter around the table at will.

By the time the bottom of Chris’s beer is gone, Sebastian’s fingers are comfortably settled along the zip of his jeans, and Chris is starting to sweat.

He leans forward nervously - seriously, can no one else see this? - one elbow steadied against the table as he takes a quick inventory of everyone’s faces. Nobody seems to… to notice anything is amiss. Chris licks his lips, rubs a hand over his sticky forehead and buzzed hair, and then leans back.

Maybe he tries to be a good man, but not even a saint could look away from this.

Chris takes a peek. He repositions his own arm, so he can get a good look without making it too obvious - this is fun and all, but he doesn’t want anyone else getting a sneaky peek of what Sebastian is up to under there.

And then he feels himself go dumb when he sees Sebastian’s fingers rubbing, steady and following along the length of his fly. Chris’s chest flushes, and then he feels the creep of heat up the column of his throat and into his cheeks. Sebastian’s whole hand relaxes, and tightens, and relaxes again.

“I’ll get the next round,” Chris blurts out, jerking up from the table.

The conversation fades out behind him as he makes a beeline for the bar. Mackie is behind the stick, soda gun in one hand and a bottle of Jack Daniels in the other. He looks up as Chris approaches, the edges of his afro catching the light like a halo.

“Hey man,” he greets, setting two mixed drinks on the bar top.

Chris clears his throat and leans close, so Mackie can hear him over the music. He shouts, “Can we get another round on my tab?”

“Mr. Money Bags,” Mackie teases. He bounces one shoulder along to the beat of the Pointer Sisters song drifting down from above, and adds, “Oh, I love you, Daddy Warbucks!”

Laughing in relief, Chris manages a, “Yeah, yeah,” and continues on his way to the back of the club.

The staff bathroom is a small, private paradise. Chris closes the single occupant door and beelines for the sink. His brain is stuck on an endless loop of Sebastian: the first time Chris laid eyes on him in those tiny red short-shorts; dressed in shiny black leather on TV, like a fetish pin-up girl; shirtless and lit up by fire, deeply at home and ankle-deep in snakes; that morning in Chris’s own bed, red horns showing bright against the dark color of his hair.

Chris tries to steady his breath as he turns the cold water tap on.

When the bathroom door opens a second time, he isn’t surprised when he looks up, and meets Sebastian’s gaze in the grungy mirror.

His brain feeds him all the wrong priorities. The sink water runs as his concentration jumps the track. For the first time in Chris’s adult life, he can’t think of anything but the way Sebastian’s hand might feel rubbing up and down his jean fly.

As Sebastian steps into his personal space, Chris lifts his arms up automatically, and rests them up around Sebastian’s shoulders.

“Kitten,” Sebastian breathes, sucking an open-mouthed kiss to the side of Chris’s jaw.

Nobody has ever kissed Chris like that before. He would have been lucky to get a peck on the mouth, if at all; the feeling of Sebastian’s tongue and lips against the stubble of his beard makes him physically weak. His stomach flips. His eyes turn wet.

Sebastian kisses him again, and again, and again.

He isn’t scared of Chris. He doesn’t stop, even when Chris’s breathing gets heavy and fast and a little bit desperate. When he gets to Chris’s chin, he pauses - and this is it, Chris thinks, this is where everything ends - but it’s only to tease. He bites his teeth into Chris’s chin and then traces his mouth over the same spot, up to the bare skin under the corners of Chris’s mouth where his beard has never grown in right.

Chris’s heart is thunking so hard he swears he feels every rush of blood.

They’ve kissed before - twice, now - but this feels new. Chris watches Sebastian’s face, and the subtle changes in his expression. Sebastian looks at Chris’s lips, eyes unfocused and hot, before his gaze flickers back up to meet Chris’s eyes.

A little smirk charms its way up into the corners of Sebastian’s mouth. Oh yeah, now Chris is sure he’s in trouble. He feels his body lean in as Sebastian steps even closer, and then Chris drops his chin, watching dazedly as Sebastian hooks his fingers under the hem of Chris’s shirt.

This close up, Sebastian’s expression looks certain. He looks - now, more than ever - like someone who knows exactly what he wants. That’s the last full, independent thought Chris forms before Sebastian leans in, and traces the tip of his tongue over the curve of Chris’s bottom lip.

Something sizzles. Chris doesn’t know if it’s Sebastian, or his own sexy thoughts. Either way, his mouth drops open, surprised, and he makes a dumb noise. Sebastian laughs at him, but he doesn’t pull back. Just tugs Chris tighter by the shirt, and lets his tongue bump over Chris’s front teeth on his way to Chris’s top lip. 

A happy little curl of smoke follows Sebastian’s laugh. Chris watches as Sebastian’s smile turns into a devastating grin.

“Someone’s gonna notice we’re gone,” he says, trying to break the tension - but, even as the words move through his mouth, he can’t seem to get any gravity behind them.

Sebastian teases him for that. He lets his mouth linger right in front of Chris’s, a little bit open, lips roughed up from Chris’s stubble, tongue relaxed. But he doesn’t do anything serious about closing the distance between them. Chris wants it.

He wants it so bad.

It’s been just a few seconds of staring, waiting for someone to give in, when Sebastian laughs and breaks their eye contact to glance down at Chris’s lips, and then steps in close to kiss Chris properly on the mouth. Chris exhales sharp through his nose, and his eyes close, and he sinks into it.

This feeling makes Chris so thoroughly satisfied he could die.

He’d be happy like this - kissing wet and a little bit rough - forever. Sebastian’s hands move under his shirt. Chris flexes his stomach muscles without meaning to; it’s just - strange - to be touched in a way that isn’t medical or familial or strictly rudimentary.

Sebastian’s thumbs trace along the lines of Chris’s abdomen, and then far up enough to bump against the bottom curve of Chris’s pecs. Nobody has touched Chris’s nipples in a sexual way before. It’s a surprise when Sebastian thumbs them, and it’s an even bigger shock when he feels his dick respond like they’re wired together.

He can’t kiss Sebastian anymore. He’s too shaky; it’s all too much. Panting, he leans back against the wall. He’s just gotta catch his breath and maybe splash some water on his face, and then he’ll - he’ll -

Sebastian slides his hand into Chris’s pants. 

“Fuck,” Chris swears, head banging back against the cheap concrete.

Sebastian huffs a laugh into his ear, and then sucks a wet kiss right below it. The hand he’s got wrapped around Chris’s dick inside his jeans moves again. All this time, Chris thought having another guy jerk you off would be like doing it yourself - but turns out, he was - he was - wrong about that.

Chris does not have this much patience when he gets himself off. Just like with the kiss, Sebastian is a real tease about it, keeping his whole fist tight at first, but then loosening up and just letting Chris’s dick slide between his pointer and middle fingers right when the going is about to get good.

“Seb,” he gasps, the third time Sebastian pulls the rug out from under his feet.

Still with his face buried against Chris’s jaw, Sebastian grins, and looks back over his shoulder. It’s the first time Chris realizes their reflection is perfectly framed in the grubby mirror over the sink: and that, it turns out, is all he needs to come.

He has to hold onto Sebastian so he doesn’t hit the floor.

It feels like he just got part of his brain removed - it takes a few seconds for the ringing in his ears to stop, and when it does, he’s left with a flushed feeling face, and a sweaty hairline.

“If I knew you had a thing for public hanky-panky, I would have been here opening night,” Sebastian jokes, sucking his pointer finger off with a pop.

Chris grimaces at him at first, but then laughs and covers his eyes with one hand.

“Lord save me,” he murmurs, voice soft and with a little smile on his face. He’s still breathing dumb and probably as red as - well.

Sebastian knows he’s joking. He leans close, eyes drawn down to Chris’s mouth, and shakes his head ‘no.’ Chris is still smiling when Sebastian presses their mouths together again, sure.

~

Thank god the house lights are down low by the time they get back to the table.

“Hi, sailor,” Scarlett greets, voice low and sultry.

Chris sits beside her gingerly, and tries to play it cool.

~

A few hours later, long after everyone has left for the night, Chris and Sebastian sit on the roof of The Comedy Store, legs hanging over the edge.

“I wish you could have met Hayley,” Chris says, thoughtful. He looks out at the stars some more - Sebastian turned them up extra bright tonight, so they’re easier to see in the smog. “You’d like her.”

Sebastian leans back on his elbows, and looks over at Chris.

“Oh yeah, I know Hayley.” His tail curls up, twisting this way and that. “We go way back.”

Chris almost falls off the edge of the building. “WHAT?”

Amused, Sebastian raises his eyebrows, and shrugs. Trust Chris to bump into demons all over town. It makes sense, though, she had that devilish grin and --

“I met her in…” Sebastian trails off, squinting into the distance over Chris’s head as he thinks. He pinches one eye closed, and then the other. “1953. Weird year. You guys finally got around to curing polio, though - good job on that, by the way.”

Chris gets distracted by Sebastian’s tail as it curls closer, the little spade tip curving around his ankle.

“1953?” he asks, confused.

There’s a lot he doesn’t know about all of this devil business, sure, but he definitely thought all of Sebastian’s… kin… had been around forever. And he remembers only recently finding out Hayley is just one year younger than he is. If Sebastian met her in 1953, that would have made her nothing more than a kid.

“I didn’t start making deals just yesterday, kitten,” Sebastian says.

It takes a minute for Chris to realize what he’s talking about. When it clicks, he smacks Sebastian’s arm hard enough that all the stars in the sky shake.

“Ow!” Sebastian rubs his arm and scowls at him, tail immediately gone from where it was worming its way up Chris’s pant leg. “What the hell was that for!!”

“I can’t believe you.” Chris grimaces and shakes his head, then turns away to frown out over the Hollywood Hills. Before Sebastian can get a word in, Chris turns back to face him, eyes squinty, and adds, “She was a little kid!”

Chris belatedly realizes that he must have surprised Sebastian with that smack, because the immediate area they’re sitting in is boiling with fire. He can burn the whole city down for all Chris cares.

“I don’t make the rules!”

Oh, please, he doesn’t make the rules, he --

“You’re the Antichrist!” Chris shouts, and then feels a little stupid when it goes echoing around the streets below them. He leans forward and lowers his voice to a hiss. “You should know better than that. Making deals with little kids, jesus. You’re a pill.”

“Kitten,” Sebastian begins, holding one hand out, “If you just let me explain...”

Chris narrows his eyes. “Go ahead.”

Sebastian stares back, surprised, one hand still hanging in the air. It’s pretty obvious no argument immediately comes to him. He opens his mouth and then closes it, still looking at Chris’s face.

“She was a really smart kid,” he finally manages, otherwise at a loss.

Chris’s eyes narrow even further. “No more. Not with little kids.”

“Fine.” Sebastian doesn’t sound happy about it.

Nodding, Chris looks back out over the city. “Fine.”

A minute later, Sebastian’s tail is back around his ankle.

Chris works pretty hard to hide his smile.

~

The next day, Chris opens his desk drawer, and pulls out his notepad.

He flips through the pages - past old remnants of jokes, and phone numbers he at some point needed to remember - until he gets to a fresh sheet.

At the top, he writes _SOUL EQUITY_ alongside the date. A few lines underneath that, he starts to make a list. The first item on it is _BATHROOM AT THE STORE._ He writes #2 and #3 out, too, even though he doesn’t have anything to put beside them yet.

“There we go,” he says to himself, meticulously ripping the sheet from its pad.

~

Sex, it turns out, is pretty great.

Chris may only have one handjob under his belt so far - at least, not including his prior sexual experiences with men, one of which concluded with him getting beat up afterwards - but he feels like a whole new guy.

In fact, the next time he sees Yash, he’s got a little pep in his step.

“You are all sunshine!” Yash tells him with a grin. “I told you - confidence is key.”

With a laugh, Chris sets his questionable choice of lunch meat and a loaf of white bread down on the counter. Because he feels like treating himself, he picks up some mustard, too, and adds it to the pile.

“It’s a good day, Yash,” Chris says, reaching for his wallet.

Yash gives him another one of his million dollar smiles, and promises, “Every day is a good day in Los Angeles.”

For now, Chris is going to keep the bit about LA being the gateway to hell to himself.

“You know it, pal,” Chris says instead.

He unwraps his fresh pack of cigarettes as he heads for the door, and sticks one in his mouth as he drops down into the sunshine outside. Jeez, he realizes, patting one hand over his jean pockets, he must have left his lighter at home. That’s strange, he usually puts it right back in--

“Boo,” Sebastian grins.

Chris startles, but to his credit, he doesn’t yell this time. He does, however, snatch his lighter back out of Sebastian’s extended hand.

“Hey!” Sebastian laughs. “Have some manners, peanut.”

Chris pauses to light his cigarette, and then counters, “Don’t steal my things.”

He pointedly does not comment on Sebastian’s t-shirt, which just says SCHOOL SUCKS in big, blocky letters. Sometimes he thinks Sebastian does shit just to get a rise out of him.

The look currently on Sebastian’s face says Chris’s hunch is very correct.

“I’m on my way to teach school children how to get started in the dark arts.” A few feet up the sidewalk, a low-hanging tree branch pops into flames. Before Chris can tell Sebastian to cut it out, it poofs back to normal, even though there is still a little bit of smoke hanging around. Chris turns to find Sebastian grinning. “Care to join me?”

“Funny,” he replies, squinting a little. “What are you actually up to?”

Sebastian gives him a look - maybe… sultry? - and then says, “I’m just in the neighborhood,” very innocently.

Well that’s an even bigger fib than the thing about teaching satanism to kindergarteners. Chris glances down at Sebastian’s t-shirt, trying to play it cool even though he’s been struck with a sudden spell of dick thoughts. That handjob was pretty great, maybe he could get another one of those.

Then he realizes that - in the one minute he wasn’t looking before this - Sebastian’s shirt has shrunk about two full sizes. Now not only can Chris see the pointed outline of his nipples, he can see the start of his belly, too.

Stupid sexy devil.

“Okay,” Chris says.

Maybe Sebastian will stick around for a sandwich afterwards, too.

~

_#2 - IN MY APARTMENT._

_#3 - TWICE._

~

A week later, Chris turns up at the Marina with a bag full of Mexican food.

Scarlett greets him at the front door with a delighted grin on her face.

“Hey, big boy,” she says, letting him in. “What are you doing here?”

At Chris’s feet, Baby Cinnamon is wiggling around with a - weird, what looks like an arm, but there’s no way it could be - Chris reaches down to pet him - and yes - that is definitely, DEFINITELY a human arm, up to and including the hand.

Chris yelps, and drops it immediately.

“We’re trying a new raw diet,” Scarlett explains diplomatically.

It’s been a while now since Chris has had combat flashbacks, but that… does the trick.

“Got it,” he says, pinched. Oh, jeez, he’s breathing fast. Trying to gulp his way out of hyperventilating, he holds up the bag of food, and says, “I brought dinner. Sorry, I should have… called?”

“Sebastian isn’t here.” Scarlett doesn’t sound apologetic about it. She also reaches directly for the bag of tacos. Distracted, she rummages one hand around inside, and says, “I think I have some beer in the fridge.”

So that’s how he and Scarlett end up sitting in the galley eating tacos and drinking beer. Cabal even comes out of hiding to beg for a taco, which Chris graciously provides.

“You’re a good man,” Chris says seriously, handing over a tortilla chip.

Scarlett gives him a look. “He doesn’t know what you’re saying.”

“I know that,” Chris tells her, a little offended.

Truthfully… he doesn’t. Over the course of their dalliance so far, Chris has seen Sebastian hold a conversation with a snake, a gigantic tiki head, and a puff of smoke. The other day, Sebastian and a cat hissed at each other after crossing paths on the sidewalk.

As far as Chris can tell, everything is fair game, and there’s still a lot of stuff he doesn’t understand about Sebastian’s world.

And that sparks his curiosity.

“You’ve known him a while, huh?” he asks Scarlett.

Scarlett doesn’t miss a beat. She knows exactly what he’s doing. “Cabal?”

“Sebastian,” Chris corrects. He doesn’t roll his eyes, but it’s close.

“Sure.” Her mouth curls up into a close-mouthed smile. “He’s my best friend.”

Well, that makes sense. Chris nods and eats another chip. Cabal doesn’t seem like he’s willing to stoop to whining or begging, he just stands at Chris’s side, stoic. Chris provides another chip because he really is a very good boy.

“So you… grew up together?” Chris hedges, trying to play it cool.

Scarlett gapes at him before asking, “How old do you think I am!”

“I don’t!” Chris blurts immediately. “I don’t think, uh, you’re. What? Wow, you look, maybe 18! 19.”

His vision of some type of Hell Middle School for Bad Girls and Boys vanishes into thin air. Even though Sebastian hasn’t really given him the whole bible lesson on who his parents are and how exactly he came to fruition, Chris had definitely imagined some kind of rough and tumble teenaged Sebastian smoking cigarettes in the girl’s bathroom.

“I answered a wanted ad in the newspaper,” Scarlett tells him, unimpressed but also a little amused. “THREE YEARS AGO.”

Chris knots his eyebrows. “Got it.”

“I can’t believe you thought I was a demon!”

Now he’s going red. He fumbles another chip in Cabal’s direction. War was hell on earth, but it was less nerve-wracking than this conversation.

“You’re just… I don’t know! Intimidating!” he finally exclaims, flapping one hand out. She pointedly looks at it - at his limp wrist - and then looks at his face and cocks her eyebrow. “You’re always wearing red lipstick.”

Now she’s just back to normal. She gives him a saucy eyebrow raise, and says, “Gets you going, huh?”

“See!” Chris blurts, exasperated. Scarlett starts laughing immediately. As far as Chris is concerned, the husky tone in her voice sounds EXACTLY like what a lady devil would have. He frowns. “You’re pulling my chain.”

“You got me, Evans,” she smiles fondly. He frowns back - a kneejerk reaction - and watches as she eases off the heat and goes back to her food. After a minute of chewing, she looks at him, thoughtful. “Can I ask you a question?”

Chris knows she’s going to anyway, so he nods.

“What’s fucking the devil like?”

That… isn’t the question Chris was expecting to hear. He turns around and looks over one shoulder, just to make sure there isn’t some guy standing behind him she’s actually talking to.

The coast is - maybe unsurprisingly - clear.

“I don’t get it,” Chris says honestly, eyebrows knotting.

Scarlett rolls her eyes, breaks a piece of taco shell off, and sticks it in her mouth.

“I know what you were up to at Mitzi’s,” she says, mouth stretching into a wicked grin. That look alone leaves Chris not entirely convinced she doesn’t have some kind of demon blood in her. That smile looks directly related to Sebastian. “Don’t get all uptight.”

“I’m not uptight,” he lies. He is a little uptight.

When she squints at him, Chris squints back. Like she doesn’t have her fingers all up in Sebastian’s business deals. If she wants to learn more about their business transaction, she can traipse into the snake dungeon and check out Sebastian’s creepy red devil ledger herself. 

And anyway it’s not like she hasn’t already had a piece of the pie.

“No,” Scarlett announces, reading his mind. “Trust me, sailor. Before you walked through that door, we were dealing with a whole different ballgame.” She stretches across the counter and reaches for her purse. “When I met Sebastian, his teeth looked like candy corn. Pointed ears, a gross goatee. The whole thing.”

Well. Chris wasn’t expecting that. He watches as Scarlett pulls out a half-empty pack of Virgina Slims.

“He…” Chris trails off, scratching behind one ear. “Candy corn?”

Scarlett lights her cigarette, and leans back, curling her hair around one finger. She watches Chris, gaze half-lidded and practically weaponized. There’s no way any man has ever made it out of her embrace alive.

“Tell me about the first time you saw him,” she says quietly, pressing the pad of her thumb between her teeth.

That… Chris doesn’t want to get into that. He frowns, and looks down at his hands.

“Come on.” His voice is quiet in a way he can’t make louder. “You already know the answer to that.”

Scarlett seems to recognize she’s pressing on something uncomfortable.

She says, “He wasn’t mine to look at.”

Well, fuck. Chris squeezes his eyes closed, and rubs the bridge of his nose. He knows there’s something about this whole appearance thing she isn’t telling him. When he opens his eyes, she’s holding out a cigarette for him to take.

He accepts the cigarette, and the fact that his answer to her question is going to set some things into motion that he won’t be able to take back.

“Red shorts. The, you know. The basketball kind, with the,” he pauses to carve out the approximation of a hemline in the air. “All that, jeez. All that tanned skin. He smiled at me. I thought I had never seen a smile like that. And then he said his name was Little Horn, but I could call him Sebastian.”

It takes courage to look over at Scarlett. Chris expects her to mock him, or to look revolted, maybe, by the things he remembers best.

She lets out a low whistle. Then she says, “Nice work.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Chris tells her, shaking his head. He belatedly reaches for the lighter, and sticks her lady-brand cigarette in his mouth. “He came to me. He showed up that way.”

Chris takes a drag of his cigarette, and looks over as Baby Cinnamon tip-taps his way in. He goes right for Chris, leaving a little sprinkle of brimstone across the clean kitchen floor in his wake.

“But you built him that way,” Scarlett says. “Because when the devil walks in, he does it looking like salvation. You made his eyes grey, you put every tooth in his mouth. You dreamed it; he became it.”

Frowning, Chris counters, “That’s dishonest.”

“Yeah,” Scarlett shrugs. “The devil pulls the strings, better the devil you know, do good to the devil and he’ll deliver you to hell…” she trails off, nose and forehead wrinkling up as she thinks. “Give me a second, I know I have more.”

Chris sneaks Baby Cinnamon an entire taco and says, “I get the point.”

Laughing, Scarlett gets up and pats him on the shoulder on her way to the fridge. Chris smokes his cigarette, and looks down at the dog head still in his lap. Even though this taco is delicious in about nine different ways, Baby Cinnamon seems way more interested in eating ash.

“So,” Chris starts, waffling. He’s just gotta bite it out. Scarlett hands him a beer, and looks at his face, intrigued. “He should look human… all over… then. Right?”

The grin that snaps its way across her face says she knows EXACTLY what Chris is talking about.

“You tell me! What’s your trophy dick look like?”

That’s… for Chris to know.

“Just - regular,” he manages.

He hasn’t dedicated much time to sketching out his idea of the perfect dick, but he could probably come up with a quick prototype. It’s very possible he had initial concerns about coming face-to-face with a scary barbed model.

Scarlett looks at his expression and laughs.

“You’re thinking about his tail, but as a dick, right?” she cackles.

That… well. That’s pretty much exactly what Chris was picturing.

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” he says.

A second later, the front door opens. Chris startles as both dogs blast out a bark and take off, Baby Cinnamon a tail’s length behind Cabal. Well, so much for his forbidden treat operation. Chris listens to Sebastian getting in and crumples up his food wrappers.

Now all he can think about is what Sebastian might be packing, which is great. He clears his throat and delicately dabs at the corner of his mouth with a napkin.

“Kitten!”

Chris looks over to see Sebastian standing in the kitchen doorway, surprised. Both dogs blow back into the kitchen after him.

He looks over Chris’s shoulder, and narrows his eyes.

“What are you two talking about?” he asks suspiciously.

After sneaking Baby Cinnamon one more piece of forbidden taco, Chris turns to look over at Scarlett. She looks like the cat who got caught with the bird still in its mouth. Meanwhile, Chris feels like he’s still trying very hard not to clutch his pearls.

“We were discussing your devil dick,” she smiles. Then she holds up a bag and asks innocently, “Taco?”

Well. Chris’s eyes immediately drop to the front of Sebastian’s pants: black jeans, like usual. He hears Scarlett laugh behind him, and then looks up at Sebastian’s face just in time to see him light up like a Christmas tree.

Sebastian rests a hand on either hip, and juts his crotch out.

“Feast your eyes,” he announces.

And, since he asked so nicely, Chris does.

~

The thing about dick is, Chris hasn’t been face to face with many of them.

For a while, he figured touching someone else would be like touching himself - except, you know. Reversed. But he was wrong about that, and now, he’s pretty sure he’s gonna be wrong about what’s coming next.

And he knows what’s coming next is a dick in his mouth.

Chris clears his throat, and reaches down to adjust his pants. He’s never been this deep into Sebastian’s home before. They’re in his private den: it’s not a bedroom, but there is a set of double doors on the other side of the room that look awfully promising.

He tips his beer back, and takes a good gulp.

Just having a drink and some sexy thoughts in the devil’s private cave. Regular Thursday night. Chris squints at the art over the fireplace like he has any idea what he’s looking at: black and white sketches, old-timey and weird in a way that makes him itchy.

Sebastian is on the other side of the room, making himself a drink and watching Chris with a wicked look on his face.

“You sure you don’t want one of these?” he asks innocently.

From his little leather chair island, Chris considers it, however momentarily. A mixed drink would make him feel bold, but…

“I’m alright.” His voice sounds cool and everything. “Thanks, though.”

Sebastian grins. As Chris waits, he lets his gaze wander. He’s not big on interior design, but this room feels much cozier than the other places Chris has been on this boat so far. For starters, there are no snakes - at least ones he can see.

He’s peering around at the floorboards, just making sure, when Sebastian makes an appearance by straddling one of his thighs.

“So.” Chris watches as Sebastian takes the beer out of his hand, and sets it on the little table next to their chair. Then he smirks down at Chris, horns happily on his head, and asks, “What _do_ you want?”

That’s a… well. That’s a good question.

Chris swallows. He’s got some, some answers. He could run by.

Even though Sebastian is very close - so close, Chris can see the stubble under his jaw - none of his weight is on Chris’s thigh. His feet are still on the floor, and Chris is, very decidedly, he thinks, exactly where he wants to be.

“I wanna see it,” comes bumbling out of his mouth before he can stop it.

Sebastian looks positively delighted. He grins and holds his drink out to the side, so he can run his free hand over his own hip and stomach.

Well, yeah. That’s a good place to touch. Chris watches, stunned, as Sebastian feels himself up and sips his drink. Then Chris realizes that he, too, can get in on the action.

It’s a little stiff, but he plants one hand on the outside of Sebastian’s thigh.

“You can do anything you want,” Sebastian swears. “Touch me.”

Chris’s grip squeezes. He stares at Sebastian’s hand. That same hand has jerked him off. It’s been on Chris’s dick, and now it’s about to show him Sebastian’s. He helps unbutton Sebastian’s fly, and then watches as Sebastian pushes down either side of his open jeans.

“You’re not wearing underwear,” Chris blurts.

He feels slack jawed, and looks up at Sebastian for advice. Because it’s not just the dick in front of him, it’s everything. 

Sebastian laughs, endeared, and sets down his drink.

As Sebastian stretches over the arm of the chair, Chris moves his hands. He puts them on Sebastian’s thighs, and then his butt, and then around on the sides of his hips. He’s, he’s just gotta test. He’s gotta see how it feels.

“Wow,” he announces. He licks his lips.

It’s a great dick, but jeez, look at all this. Chris’s knuckles bump against the slope of muscle that joins Sebastian’s abdomen to the top of his pelvis. He’s never touched anyone there before. At this point he’s seen Sebastian’s hips plenty, but wow, look at them like this: the perfect cut of muscle and bone.

All of these things put together flip some switch in Chris’s brain.

It’s new. And he wants it. He wants all of it.

“I’m gonna,” he starts, trailing off with a faint nod. His sentence goes nowhere. He’s too distracted, and he wouldn’t know what to say. He’s seen a few pornos, but they all had women in them, and they never did this.

When he gets close enough, he opens his mouth.

And it’s - it’s - it’s really not easy. Chris is suddenly aware of how limited the space inside of his mouth is. He knots his eyebrows and goes down on Sebastian’s dick as far as he can, but then he has to pull off, and THEN he accidentally slurps drool everywhere during his retreat.

He sits back, panting, and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Good - ugh,” Sebastian swears, reaching down to squeeze around his dick. He’s a little out of breath himself, Chris would like to note. “Good work, kitten.”

Chris squints up at him, but he will take the compliment.

He watches as Sebastian takes off his jeans, and then helps Chris undo his. Chris’s jeans don’t make it any further down than all jammed up around his calves. He gives his own dick a little squeeze as Sebastian gets settled across his lap, legs kicked up over the arm of the chair.

A little pop of hellfire sparks on the ground next to them as Sebastian starts to jerk himself off. Now that Chris knows what it feels like to touch, he isn’t interested in keeping his hands to himself.

He grabs Sebastian’s butt and then curves his thumb and fingers around the inside of Sebastian’s thigh. When their fingers bump together, Chris moves his hand, and rubs the base of Sebastian’s dick. There are so many places to touch, and every time Chris does, Sebastian puts on even more of a show.

When Sebastian comes, he looks up at Chris, grinning as he jerks off all over his stomach.

“Sebastian,” Chris manages, dumb. How does anyone get anything done feeling like this all the time? He rubs one hand over his hard on, but with Sebastian still on his lap, he doesn’t have enough range of motion to get off.

It isn’t until Sebastian climbs off him that Chris realizes the tail is back.

When Sebastian notices him looking, he teases, “I think it likes you.”

“Yeah.” Chris watches, stunned, as Sebastian settles himself between Chris’s knees.

He doesn’t last long with his dick in Sebastian’s mouth. For as much as Chris’s blowjob had heart and soul behind it, Sebastian has black magic and ten thousand years of sucking dick on his side.

With his mouth full Sebastian can’t talk that much, but damned if he doesn’t try.

“Come on, kitten,” he pants, pulling off to wrap his hand around the base of Chris’s dick and suck all down the side. The hard eye contact makes it torture. Chris lets out an actual whine when Sebastian starts sucking around the top, tongue out. “I want it.”

Chris’s hands turn to claws as he comes, gripping onto the chair arms for dear life. He’s so riled up it almost hurts. His breathing stops every time his hips jerk forward, and then he gasps, a moment of reprieve before his body tightens up and pushes his dick into Sebastian’s mouth again.

That’s where it wants to be and Chris is not about to start saying no.

He flops back against the chair, panting. His thigh muscles are still spasming, and he groans as Sebastian laughs and uses them to pull himself back to his feet.

“Well, what can I say, peanut,” Sebastian reviews, leaning down to press a kiss against Chris’s half open mouth. He starts laughing again as he pulls away. “What you lack in experience, you make up for in enthusiasm.”

Chris gives him a little shove, but Sebastian just laughs and catches his hand.

~

_#4 - IN SEBASTIAN’S BEDROOM DUNGEON (NOT SCARY)_

~

Over the next couple days, Chris has two sets at The Comedy Store.

He’s bent over the little postal stand in the drug store on the corner of Sunset and La Cienga when he bumps into Hayley. Chris looks up from where he’s filling out a cashier’s cheque for his brother, confused after something hits him in the cheek.

Hayley is standing a few feet away, cracking up.

“Oh now you’re in trouble,” Chris laughs. He bends down to pick up the pack of gum she threw at his face, and tosses it back.

She catches it easily - Chris wasn’t aiming right - and grins as she comes over.

“Nice to see you, stranger.” Her eyes are all squinty and happy as she takes him in. It has been a while, they’ve been working different schedules for the last three weeks at least. Chris hasn’t seen her since before Sebastian told him about their deal. “You working tonight?”

Chris shuffles the cashier’s cheque into an envelope.

“Sure am,” he says, pausing to lick the strip. Hayley wrinkles her nose. He gets it sealed, and then uses the floppy end to bonk her over the head. “You’re in the main room now, huh? That’s pretty great.”

She follows him through one of the narrow, overstuffed aisles.

“Better than the lady stage,” she snorts. As they walk back out onto the sidewalk, she cracks her pack of gum open, and offers a piece up. Chris stuffs his brother’s money into the mailbox sitting in front of the drug store window. “Want one?”

Chris accepts the stick she holds out, but also raises an eyebrow. “You trying to tell me something?”

“You’re onto me, Evans,” she teases, laughing.

As they wait for the crosswalk light to change, Chris stands there with his hands in his pockets and wonders if he should say something. He’d hate it if someone brought Sebastian up to him, at least in relation to their deal.

He decides not to say anything for now.

The crosswalk light changes, and they step out into traffic.

~

As a general rule, when Chris is at Sebastian’s, he tries to stick to the main floor.

So far he has yet to run into a scary item down here - although he did find that voodoo head in the kitchen knife drawer that one time. And he’s pretty sure the concrete gargoyle in the hallway is staring at him.

Chris clears his throat, and follows Sebastian down the hall.

~

_#5 - ON THE DECK UNDER THE STARS_

_#6 - IN THE SNAKE OFFICE (SCARY)_

~

“This can be fixed, you know,” Chris says seriously.

He wiggles the kitchen tap one more time to demonstrate. It’s very loose. Chris noticed it the first time he used it: if Sebastian isn’t careful, he might get a leak.

Sebastian is standing in front of the open refrigerator, shirtless and eating directly from a carton of Chinese takeout. He raises his eyebrows, mouth stuffed full of chow mein hanging out like worms, and shrugs.

Unimpressed, Chris raises his eyebrows and asks, “Do you have a wrench?”

There are a lot of things - just small things - Chris has noticed around here. There’s a light switch in the hallway that needs replacing, too, and Chris is pretty sure that gargoyle doesn’t care.

“I don’t know what that is,” Sebastian says, and Chris can’t tell if he’s joking or not.

He sighs and wipes his hands off on the thighs of his jeans.

“Put your horns away,” Chris demands. He takes the food out of Sebastian’s hands, and puts it back on the tiny glass shelf inside the fridge. “Where’d your shirt go?”

Sebastian glares but lets Chris manhandle him. “I can light you on fire, you know.”

A few minutes later, they’re walking back along the dock towards land. Chris looks down at the very rudimentary shopping list he scrawled on the back of the delivery receipt: wrench, hammer, nails, washer, light switch cover. He has a few tools he can bring over from home, too.

“What are the chances I can get you into a tool belt?” Sebastian asks, walking along beside Chris as they head to his car.

Chris looks away from his list, and squints over at Sebastian. “A tool belt?”

“ _Just_ a tool belt.” A wicked grin. “And a tan boot.”

There is no way Chris is swinging a hammer with no pants on. He frowns over at Sebastian, and heads around the side of his car to open the passenger door first.

“I’m not wearing that,” Chris says seriously, shaking his head.

~

“Put my pants back ON,” Chris bitches, after almost taking his thumb off with a hammer at the shock of feeling his ass zap right out into the fresh air.

On the other side of the room, Sebastian rolls his eyes.

“Spoilsport,” he sighs.

~

_#9 - IN THE (FIXED) SHOWER_

_#10 - TWICE_

~

A week later, Chris is standing in his bathroom.

More specifically he is standing in his bathroom, and checking himself out in the mirror over the sink. He runs his fingers over the gigantic hickey on his pec muscle. Jeez, that makes him nervous - if anyone saw that, they’d ask questions. He runs his fingers back over it the other way. But he also kinda likes it.

Chris smiles a bit, and turns to the side.

He’s a little worried about his butt. This whole thing he’s gotten himself into has been very exciting and, you know. Stimulating. But lately Sebastian spends a lot of time touching his ass, and that suck mark - wow, Chris thinks, turning a little more to see - is a recent development.

All the times Chris has had sex, he’s never been the… you know. The girl.

Frowning, Chris checks his butt out one last time, and then reaches for his jeans. He’s gotta get to work and stop thinking about getting fucked by the devil.

~

The problem is that’s what Chris is thinking about.

He squints into the spotlight, and tilts his head to the side as he launches into the last half of this joke set-up. When the audience laughs, he grins a little, and adjusts the cord coming from the bottom of the mic.

Sebastian would fuck him good. He knows that.

“Uh,” he stammers, lost in the middle of his set.

He stares out at the audience. They stare back at him, some laughing, assuming Chris’s sudden lack of thought is a bit.

All Chris can picture is that dick - his Perfect Dick, conveniently attached to the rest of Sebastian - all over his hands and his mouth and his face. He knots his eyebrows. Where the fuck was he again? He’s given himself amnesia.

“Someone better cut me off,” he jokes, trying to find his footing again. The audience cracks up. Chris shakes his head. “Sorry, guys.”

He - narrowly - gets through the rest of his set without another slip-up.

And, afterwards, he beelines for the bathroom, and splashes cold water all over his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come say hay on [tumbls](http://sidnihoudini.tumblr.com)! I'm hanging out there tonight answering questions.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy devil Wednesday! I'm nailing down the finale now, and it looks like there are going to be seven parts total rather than six.

“He’s where?” Chris frowns.

Scarlett doesn’t look up from where she’s writing in a book. “New York.”

“New York,” he grumbles, flopping into the chair across from hers. He grimaces at the top of her head and asks, “What’s he doing in New York?”

She finally looks up. Then she shrugs and says, “Something to do with alligators, I don’t know the details. He’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Alligators?” Chris itches his arm. Alligators are… gross. Slimy.

Scarlett goes back to whatever she was writing. “Yep.”

Frowning, Chris watches what she’s doing for another minute, and then gets up out of the chair. Maybe snakes and alligators can be friends? There’s no way to know for sure. He’s going to have to go to the library and dig out an encylopedia.

“Well.” He stands behind her, and scratches the back of his ear. “I was in the middle of fixing that crack in the bathroom wall.”

Scarlett waves him off and says, “Be my guest.”

It’s better than sitting at home. Chris heads back into the kitchen, where Cabal and Baby Cinnamon are both laying under the table mourning Sebastian’s absence. Chris detours from where he left his bag of tools on the counter, and squats down in front of the table instead.

“Hello,” he says seriously, eyebrows knotting. Cabal ignores him. Baby Cinnamon has extra long eyelashes - truly longer than any demon borne of hellfire should - and they’re an instant giveaway. Chris smiles. “Hi, pal. Wanna play?”

They don’t react. Chris frowns, and looks around the room. The last toy he saw either of them play with was a man’s foot from the ankle down. Chris doesn’t know what happened to it, and he isn’t about to start asking questions.

“Toy?” he asks, trying to look supportive. “Treat?”

One of Baby Cinnamon’s ears perk up. Chris knew he’d be the one to give in first.

“Come on, pal!” Now that Chris has his attention, he knows he’s gotta get jazzy to keep it. He pretends like he’s running away, but Baby Cinnamon doesn’t bite. Sighing, Chris stands there for a minute, thinking. The dogs stare back at him. It’s a stand-off.

A few minutes later, Scarlett comes into the kitchen with her notepad in one hand, a pen behind one ear, and a length of cherry Twizzlers hanging out of her mouth.

“What happened to your crack?” she asks, heading right for the fridge.

Chris jangles his car keys at them like that’s going to do something, and then he explains, “They look sad!”

“They always look sad.” Scarlett cracks open a thing of Coke, and then uses her Twizzler as a straw. Her lips are the exact same color red as the candy and the logo on the side of the can. “Hey, can you fix the window in my bedroom?”

Chris frowns, looking between the dogs and Scarlett.

“What’s wrong with it?” he finally asks, curious despite himself.

Scarlett shrugs and takes another sip. “Leaks,” she says unhelpfully.

“It leaks?” That’s a recipe for mold and mildew. Chris thinks for a minute, and then makes up his mind. “I’ll take them out for a walk, and then I’ll look at your window.”

She smirks and teases, “What a man.”

Chris forces his mouth into a frown but also blushes a little bit.

He kind of likes being complimented.

~

Walking the hellhounds is… really not easy.

There are two collars hanging off the coat rack in the hallway - one spiked, and one studded with diamonds - so Chris pulls those down.

“Are you kidding me,” he mutters, watching as Cabal’s collar slides right through his neck and lands on the floor again.

For some reason the whole thing really tickles Baby Cinnamon, who starts running in circles, alternating between banging into the wall and Chris’s knees.

In the end, Chris forgoes the leashes. He sticks to the marina, just in case, but there aren’t many people out this late. As far as Chris can tell, Sebastian’s the only one living on a houseboat. The other boat owners are usually only here during daytime hours.

By the time Chris gets back, Scarlett’s unpacking two gigantic food delivery bags on the coffee table.

“Twilight Zone,” she greets, not looking away from the TV.

Chris has never watched this show - too wary of startling himself into a panic - but this… seems achieveable. He looks at the two plates Scarlett is dumping piles of noodles and sweet and sour chicken onto. He looks at the TV, and the black and white shadowy figure emerging into the streetlight.

And then he looks at the couch, and takes a seat.

~

Sebastian is in New York for three days.

“I know this is a trying time for you,” Scarlett tells him. Her expression is long suffering and bored as she watches Chris from the other side of the front door. “But some of us still have to work.”

Hey! That’s - well.

“I work,” Chris lies, squinting at her. She laughs. “I’m just here to walk the dogs.”

That is… not entirely the truth. It’s been a long three days, and he can’t jerk off again, not today. If he didn’t already have a one way ticket to Hell, the amount of times he’s hand his hands on himself since Sebastian left would be enough to get him there.

Exercise helps get rid of the, you know. Extra energy. That he has.

“Of course you are.” The smile on Scarlett’s mouth looks sweet, but Chris knows better.

Chris matches her expression and counters, “I am.”

“Be my guest,” she purrs, grinning afterwards.

~

Twenty minutes later, Chris is sitting on a log and throwing sticks into the ocean for the dogs.

“Go get it!” he calls, when Baby Cinnamon just stands there staring at him, covered in sand with about a foot of tongue lolling from the side of his mouth. Chris grimaces; he’s got scary teeth, there’s no way around that. “Go get the stick, pal!”

When Baby Cinnamon just stares at him some more, eyes pointing in two different directions, Chris gives up and finds another stick.

That one goes sailing right over Baby Cinnamon’s head.

“Come on,” Chris sighs, hands on his hips. 

He’s looking at Baby Cinnamon’s gigantic meaty face when the first crack of lightning strikes overhead. Chris jumps.

Wow, that was loud. He blinks a few times, trying to clear the jungle leaves unfolding from the edges of his vision, and looks around. A second strike flashes through the sky. This one is so big, it spiders down and hits the sea.

Then it starts to hail.

Chris swears as he tugs his jacket up over his head. He’s from Anaheim, he’s never even met a piece of hail before, and - ow, fuck, that hurts, that one nailed him right in the ear.

He keeps his head down as he jogs along the beach, dogs running after him.

A tooth-rattling bang follows the next clap of thunder. Chris ducks out of instinct, and trips over his own feet in the sand. Okay, now this is a little bit scary. Now this is really a little bit scary and he’d like to just get back to the usual Californian sun and --

Chris rounds on the marina just in time to see the windows of Sebastian’s house flash white with light. Then, smoke. The hail turns to rain.

“Uh oh,” he breathes, breaking back into a run.

The docks are eerily quiet. Chris tries to catch his breath as he jogs down the strip that leads to Sebastian’s front door. He’s standing outside, trying to figure out if he should knock or not, when the door flies open.

“Get in here,” Scarlett hisses, yanking Chris inside by the sleeve.

He stumbles into the house, dogs on his heels, and complains, “Hey!”

“Here’s the deal.” Maybe Chris is just hearing things - maybe that thunder rattled his brain up - because Scarlett’s voice is uncharacteristically sharp; serious. Her fingers dig into the muscle of his arm. “Sebastian’s in the kitchen.”

Chris’s eyebrows bounce up his forehead.

“He’s back?”

“Just got in,” Scarlett says. She hands him a towel. “And he’s in a bad mood.”

Well, that’s a sour look on her face. Jeez. Chris would hate to be the cause of that. He quietly rubs his head dry as they stare at each other. Finally, Scarlett rolls her eyes.

She opens her mouth to say something right as the kitchen door bangs open.

“Great,” Scarlett mutters, looking at something over Chris’s shoulder.

Still drying his head off, Chris turns. He’s getting better at this devil world stuff, but even so, seeing Sebastian makes him jump.

“How was your trip?” tumbles out of his mouth.

Sebastian looks tense, and, more importantly, the kitchen behind Sebastian looks like it’s a little bit on fire. Chris frowns. He looks over at Scarlett - maybe he’s missing something - but she’s frowning and looking, too.

“It could have been better,” Sebastian answers, voice tight.

Chris looks back at Sebastian. What he means to say is something helpful, a little “hang in there, kid” encouragement.

What comes out of his mouth is an incredulous, “Did you light the kitchen on fire?”

Scarlett laughs. Chris turns to look at her again, but by the time he does, she’s already bitten her bottom lip into her mouth. Her chin is trembling, nostrils flared as she tries not to crack up again.

“I’ve had a hard week, kitten,” Sebastian snaps. His eyes are dark, navy blue, and his mouth looks wider, sharper at the edges, than Chris remembers.

It’s, well. Chris tries to edge his expression a little further away from judgey, and into sympathetic. Whatever actually happens on his face makes Scarlett burst out laughing. Then he feels his own resolve start to wobble. He bites at the inside of his mouth, jaw trembling.

Sebastian narrows his eyes, and the window behind Chris pops like a firework.

Chris screams. Scarlett laughs even more. And when Chris looks at Sebastian again, he can tell Sebastian is trying very hard to hide his smile.

~

That night, they eat dinner on top of the Hollywood sign.

“Wait a second,” Chris interrupts. “Seb, what? Real alligators?”

Sebastian’s legs are dangling off the edge, heels bouncing against the flat part of the L they’re sitting on. He grins and looks at Chris over his shoulder. Chris watches back.

“Real alligators.” His nose is all crunched up, charming.

“Why do you…” Chris trails off, perplexed. The one and only time he bumped into an alligator, he was in Vietnam and very narrowly escaped falling down a couple of rice paddies afterwards. He narrows his eyes. “.Why do you?”

As Sebastian chews the bite of food already in his mouth, Chris watches.

There was a moment earlier - while the kitchen was still on fire - that he noticed Sebastian’s eyes were too dark. The color reminded Chris of hellhounds swimming in the ocean; a leviathan breaking the water’s surface.

Now, under the bleak haze that the decrepit spotlights above them throw, Chris is noticing other things, too. His teeth. There’s one in front that is crooked, strange.

It’s like pieces of Sebastian’s serpentine insides have snuck outside.

“I have responsibilities,” Sebastian says, vague as ever. Chris rolls his eyes. “Hey! I can’t tell you everything there is to know.” Chris stabs at his chow mein; Sebastian immediately relents. “It’s an urban legend. The guy under your bed who kills your dog and licks your hand? Hookman? My girl, Bloody Mary? All me.”

Even the short summaries bring up weird memories for Chris.

“That makes you the devil AND an asshole,” he frowns, scratching his boob.

“You got me, kitten.” Now Sebastian is grinning at him again - shark mouth wide and relentless. He slides his tongue over the curve of his bottom lip when he catches Chris staring. “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard the alligator one.”

Chris shrugs. He inches a little bit closer.

“Kid wins a baby alligator at a state fair?” Sebastian tries, looking awfully judgey for someone who just set the kitchen on fire with his bad attitude. Chris shakes his head and takes a bite of food. “Mom flips her lid, makes the kid flush the thing down the toilet like it’s a goldfish?”

Maybe he read about this once in one of the funny papers, actually.

“That’s the recipe for a sewer alligator, peanut.” Sebastian sets his takeout box down, and leans back on both hands. He tilts his head as he explains, “Most of them live underneath New York City now.”

“Right,” Chris nods, thinking. He takes a bite of noodles, and then peers over at Sebastian. “So… work politics, huh?” Chris gets a very pointed look thrown his way. “I mean, you seemed pretty mad. You lit your kitchen on fire.”

Sebastian narrows his eyes even more. “I was just blowing off steam.”

“Alright, pal,” Chris smirks, shaking his head. “Just saying, is all.”

An ambulance with all its lights and sirens wailing begins to wind its way up the Hollywood Hills below. As their conversation lapses into silence, Chris wedges the last few bites of food into his mouth, and watches the ambulance’s zigzagging path.

“I have a colleague,” Sebastian finally relents. “He’s a thorn in my paw.”

Chris, surprised, turns to look at Sebastian so fast he ends up with a curly noodle hanging from his mouth.

“A colleague?” he bumbles, mouth full.

Sebastian frowns back at him. “I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Sorry.” Chris eats his dangling noodle and sets the carton down. “I just… didn’t realize you had co-workers.”

Here he was, thinking Hell had no employment. Jeez, maybe when he gets down there, he can get a cushy little office job or something. Maybe Sebastian could hook him up with a reference, or-

“I DON’T have co-workers,” Sebastian grimaces, interrupting Chris’s daydream. “I’m the King of the Bottomless Pit.”

Chris rolls his eyes and snakes a bite of Sebastian’s lemon chicken.

“Well,” he acquiesces, chewing. “Sorry you had a bad week at work.”

Once the food is gone, they lay back and look at the sky.

“Felis,” Sebastian points out. Chris tries to follow, but he’s not so good with constellations. They all look like the Milky Way to him. “Lalande had a thing for cats… weird guy.”

Chris laughs and counters, “Most people like cats.”

Up there in the sky, Sebastian points out animals and zodiac signs and even a few household appliances. He makes his favorite stars extra bright and easy to see, and tells Chris tales about the astronomers who found them.

“How do you know all that?” Chris asks. He turns his head, so he can see Sebastian’s profile.

Sebastian doesn’t move. The corners of his mouth curl up into a little smile, and, still looking up at the sky, he says, “I lived it.”

That’s - that sounds lonely. Chris is thirty, and sometimes even that feels too long.

“Huh.” He turns his head back, and looks up at the sky.

~

They crunch through the underbrush beneath the Hollywood sign.

“You’re taking the fool’s route out of here, kitten,” Sebastian complains. They’re halfway up the makeshift path that others have forged before them. Chris hears Sebastian trip on a crag in the packed dirt. “Fuck!”

Hiding his smile, Chris takes a step to the side, and holds a low-hanging branch out of the way.

“I like it.” He watches Sebastian stumble past, eyes pure black. “It’s an adventure.”

As Sebastian takes the lead, Chris lets go of the branch. He follows behind, watching the steady swing of Sebastian’s tail.

“If you want an adventure, I’ll take you to the Phlegethon,” he gripes.

Chris shrugs. “I don’t know what that is.”

“It’s a river,” Sebastian bitches, knocking another branch out of their way.

Still mostly looking at Sebastian’s butt, Chris asks, “On earth?”

“No.” Like punctuation, there’s a sizzle-pop. Chris looks up just in time to catch every tall blade of grass and curl of foliage lay down. “It’s made out of fire and blood.”

Chris stands, deeply unimpressed with their brand new, very obvious, path.

“Is that connected to the fire lake?” he asks, sour.

Sebastian looks back over his shoulder, and smiles serenely. “I can draw you a map.”

“No thanks,” Chris grumps. “They’re probably going to close this to the public now, you know.”

They start up the last stretch of incline, the one that connects the grassy hillside behind the sign to the spot where Chris parked his car.

“Calm down, Judy.” Sebastian lets Chris pass him. “I can turn it back.”

Chris grimaces and says, “Don’t call me that!”

“Sorry, peanut.”

Neither of them speak until they reach Chris’s car. Chris pulls himself off the hillside, up onto a flat stretch of land, and glares down at Sebastian, who is patiently waiting to be pulled up next.

“Fix it,” he demands.

Sebastian’s face is level with Chris’s shoe. He narrows his eyes. Chris knows Sebastian could easily zap himself up here, but it’s the principle of the thing.

He puts his hands on his hips.

They stare at each other, until slowly, painstakingly, every little piece of grass and tree bark bends back into its original position. Chris watches it happen behind Sebastian: suddenly it’s like they were never even here.

“I was always gonna do that,” Sebastian swears. He holds his hand up, and watches as Chris stoops over to help pull him up. “Don’t give me that look.”

Sebastian walks his feet up the hill, and uses Chris for leverage.

Once Sebastian is on flat ground, Chris squints and says, “I’m not giving you any look.”

When Sebastian laughs, overjoyed, Chris frowns and tries to temper his expression into something more neutral. Whatever he does to his face just makes Sebastian laugh even more.

Eyes bright, he holds onto Chris’s sides, and says, “I threw the ‘O’ down the hill once.”

“What!” Chris can’t contain his surprise or horror. He immediately invisions that gigantic wooden ‘O’ bouncing down the hill in about a hundred different pieces, plowing down trees and little woodland animals, and-

“And I may have set the ‘L’ on fire in 1938.”

Chris’s mouth drops open. “Why did you do that!”

“I didn’t have a reason to then, but now I’m pretty sure it was just so I could see this look on your face,” he grins. 

Back to dour, Chris knocks Sebastian’s hands away, and starts towards his car.

“I said I’m not giving you any looks.”

Sebastian follows along behind him, still perfectly tickled as he walks around the side of Chris’s car and opens the passenger side door.

“You are,” he promises. He’s so happy he sounds like he has rocks in his mouth. Chris yanks his door open, and drops into the front seat. Sebastian meets him over the console with a smile. “It’s good. I wish you could see it.”

The tone in his voice makes Chris’s neck flush. “Get outta here, Seb.”

Sebastian leans his head back against the leather seat. He swallows, adam’s apple bobbing, and smiles with just his lips. He watches Chris’s face.

“You kill me, kitten,” he says, voice soft.

Jesus, that - that…

Flustered, Chris busies himself with putting his keys in the ignition.

“Oh, don’t give me that.” He can feel himself going all hot. Right when he’s about to lean into it, the keys bounce out of Chris’s hand, and land in the footwell. Scandalized, he exclaims, “Hey! I was gonna-”

The last of his sentence gets cut off as Sebastian grabs him in a kiss.

Chris’s eyes close, and he grabs onto the wheel with one hand. Sebastian is kissing him good, making soft noises against Chris’s mouth. When he pulls back an inch, he licks his tongue from Chris’s bottom lip to his top lip.

“Kitten,” he breathes, holding Chris’s jaw in both hands.

This is - wow. Chris blinks, dumbfounded, and watches Sebastian’s face. Sebastian rubs his thumb along the line of Chris’s jaw, and then tugs him close again, into another kiss. Chris drops his hand off the steering wheel, and rests it on the back of Sebastian’s neck again.

Sebastian starts laughing into Chris’s mouth.

“What,” Chris mouths, horrified, as he pulls away.

“Nothing.” Sebastian is still laughing. He tilts his head forward, and sucks a kiss to the side of Chris’s neck. “I just always wanted to do this.”

Chris’s forehead wrinkles. He looks at the back of Sebastian’s head, and the nape of his neck. Then he rests his hand there because it looks warm and inviting. He wants to press his face there, too.

“You’ve kissed me before,” he says, not getting it.

Sebastian pulls away, and shakes his head.

“No, peanut.” He starts moving, one elbow on the back of the front seat as he pushes himself up. Chris watches, dumbfounded, as Sebastian climbs into his lap and straddles his thighs. “Fucking in a car.”

“Oh.” Chris leans into it when Sebastian tugs him into another kiss.

He rests his hands on Sebastian’s thighs and moans a little when Sebastian pointedly grinds down against his lap. That’s - that feels awfully good. One of his hands move from Sebastian’s thigh to the small of his back, so he can angle Sebastian into another one.

Sebastian grins, wicked this time, and happily rolls his ass against Chris’s lap again.

What are the chances of someone finding them up here? Chris feels like the stupid teenager he never got to be, flushed and excited as the windows steam up around them.

Sebastian’s hands get busy. They move up the belly of Chris’s t-shirt, pushing the fabric up over his stomach and abs. Chris watches, chest heaving, as Sebastian rubs his thumbs over Chris’s nipples, and then grins at him again.

“Anyone can see,” Chris pants.

Sebastian leans forward, and curls his tongue around Chris’s nipple. His mouth sucks hot around it, the skin of his pec. Chris lets out a struggling sound, head dropping back as one hand shoots up to hit the roof of the car.

Grinning, Sebastian leans up and presses a sweet kiss to the middle of Chris’s throat. He gulps automatically. 

Sebastian says, “I thought that was the point.”

“No.” Chris swallows again, eyes squeezing closed as he shakes his head and rolls his hips. They automatically press right into Sebastian’s butt. Stupid hard dick. “Not the point.”

Sebastian smiles at him, softer than his grin, and presses another kiss to Chris’s mouth. As he pulls back, he points over Chris’s shoulder. Chris turns around, confused, expecting to see a cop or flashlight pointing through the back window.

Instead what he sees, etched into the foggy glass, is SATAN LUVS U.

When he looks back at Sebastian, surprised, the light flickers at the periphereals of his gaze. There’s no snap, or wink, or gesture, just a gentle shift of the light. Sebastian is still in his lap, but they’re no longer in his car.

They’re on a bed. Specifically, a water bed.

“What,” Chris blurts, both hands grabbing Sebastian. “Where?”

“Not Hell,” Sebastian promises. He kisses Chris again, pressing him back into the bed. The mattress sways underneath him. He groans when Sebastian settles himself fully over Chris’s lap, rolling his hips against Chris’s again. Against Chris’s mouth, Sebastian quietly explains, “It’s just where I sleep.”

Chris looks to the right as Sebastian pulls away from his mouth, and starts sucking down the length of his neck. It’s dark in here, lit with fire and brimstone and smoke. Sebastian settles back, letting his weight drop to his butt as he leans back and pulls his t-shirt up over his head.

When Chris reaches for him automatically, he’s so warm. Warmer than anything else Chris has ever felt.

It is… actually pretty warm in here. Almost too warm.

“Fuck me, kitten,” Sebastian pants, both hands moving down to undo his jeans.

Chris - yes. Chris wants that too. He doesn’t know how to ask for it like Sebastian does, but he’s wanted it from the first time he saw Sebastian hunched over his work desk, shirtless and shrouded by the light.

“Yeah,” he breathes. He watches as Sebastian takes his pants off, and settles over Chris again, completely naked this time. Not even the tail.

Chris kinda misses the tail.

Sebastian curls back over him, holding Chris by the back of the neck as he pours himself into another kiss. Chris pants into it, and reaches down to rub his dick through his jeans. He likes the idea of Sebastian naked on top of him, especially when he’s still wearing all his clothes.

It feels dirty, and makes Chris’s insides all squirmy and confused.

He tilts his head back into the pillows when Sebastian pulls away from his mouth, and sucks his way down Chris’s jaw to his neck. Chris breathes in, and pulls hot, heavy air into his lungs.

When he looks over to the side, he realizes for the first time that the entire area around the bed is on fire. Like, immediately on fire.

Sebastian starts tugging Chris’s t-shirt up his torso. Chris catches him grinning as he watches Chris’s narrow waist and abdomen appear. Chris pushes himself up, swaying on the bed, and helps Sebastian pull his t-shirt up over his head.

“That was my good shirt,” Chris complains, after Sebastian unthinkingly throws it into the fire.

Going in for another kiss, Sebastian covers each of Chris’s pecs with a hand, and smiles against his mouth, “I’ll get you a new one.”

“Mm,” Chris agrees, stomach muscles jerking when Sebastian hits a sensitive spot on his nipple. He starts to pant when Sebastian realizes it and rubs it over a couple of times, dipping down to suck at it, too.

Chris reaches for his zipper, and starts to get out of his pants.

Sebastian stays kissing him, holding onto Chris’s chin between his thumb and pointer finger. Chris has to pull away to get his pants down over his butt, lifting his hips up off the mattress as he does so.

It’s been a long time since he did this. A very long time.

Jesus, it really feels like it’s a hundred degrees in here.

Sebastian helps him get his jeans down his legs, unwedging his feet out of his shoes as he goes. Once Chris’s jeans are lost to the fire along with his shirt, Sebastian lifts his leg up by the ankle, and kisses the side of his calf.

Nobody’s ever touched Chris there before. He squirms, embarrassed.

“First,” Sebastian tells him, leaning back over Chris’s body, torso in-between Chris’s thighs. He lays over Chris’s lower half, and wraps a hand around his dick, tongue already sliding out of his mouth. “I’m gonna suck your dick.”

Chris’s thighs are shaking with excitement and adrenaline. He watches as Sebastian sucks at the hollow of his hip, and dips close to his dick.

“And then what,” he gets out, panting.

Sebastian grins up at him, and then gives Chris a little preview by licking the side of his dick. Chris’s entire stomach tightens, muscles contracting. Sebastian squeezes his hand around Chris’s dick, and says, “Then I’m gonna ride you, and you’re going to watch.”

“Yeah.” Chris nods. Both times he had sex, it was from behind. He didn’t get to see anything, and the second it was over, that’s all it was. Over. His eyes start to close even though he doesn’t mean to as Sebastian licks at him some more. “That’s - that’s good.”

“Good,” Sebastian smirks.

By now, Chris is no stranger to getting his dick sucked by the devil. He watches, body responding, as Sebastian sucks his tongue all over the head of Chris’s dick. Chris’s breathing starts to pick up, and his brain gets all muddled and slow. He licks his lips, feeling braindead and dumb, and curls his own fingers into his boob.

Once Sebastian has him fully boned up, he sits over Chris’s hips, and goes back to kissing him on the mouth.

Chris kisses back, desperate for more now that he’s so close to the edge. His feet keep pushing his hips up, just so his dick can get to where it wants to be against Sebastian’s ass. Sebastian notices, too, and drops his weight back when Chris moves up. He grins and curves his thumb into Chris’s mouth as he pulls away from their kiss. He tugs his thumb down, pulling Chris’s mouth wider, and then dips in again.

Sweating, Chris squeezes both his hands around Sebastian’s waist, and makes Sebastian laugh when he bounces his hips up, and knocks Sebastian off balance. He falls over Chris’s chest, one hand landing in the pillow beside Chris’s head. His other hand reaches back, and wraps around Chris’s dick.

Chris knows, objectively, what’s about to happen. When Sebastian sits back against the head of Chris’s dick and starts to push back, all the muscles in Chris’s throat tighten as he groans. His body curls up off the mattress, trying to get closer, and he bumps, mouth open, against Sebastian’s chest.

“Yeah, kitten,” Sebastian pants, radiating heat. He rolls his hips and rolls back, dropping his weight and angling his hips so more of Chris slides inside. Chris mouths against his pec, and tries to control the jerk of his hips.

It’s difficult. It’s - his body wants it that way.

Smoke starts to curl off of Sebastian’s shoulders. He grins, eyes dark, and presses Chris flat back against the mattress again.

Chris gets his hands on Sebastian’s hips and gulps. There’s no way he’s making it out of this. He’s so hard he might stay that way even if he comes. Sebastian looks down at him, mouth open, horns suddenly back, and gets to what he promised. He rolls his hips forward and back, making the mattress move like a wave underneath them.

The air gets so hot, Chris can hardly breathe. He holds onto Sebastian’s body and groans as Sebastian bounces on top of him, stomach and hips twisting as he rides Chris just like he said he would.

Chris moves his hands up to Sebastian’s chest, squeezing his pecs, smoothing over his belly. This is something Chris doesn’t want to share. He’ll never tell anyone else about this for as long as he lives. He groans and tugs Sebastian down so they can kiss again.

“Seb,” Chris manages, mostly talking against Sebastian’s mouth. “I’m gonna. I can’t…”

Sebastian smiles and pulls away. Hips still working, he watches Chris’s face and balances his weight using his forearm on the bed beside Chris’s head.

“Fuck me.” Sebastian stops his hips moving as Chris’s body sends him into a round of fucking he can’t stop. His feet dig into the bed, thighs tightening as he leads with his dick and starts fucking up into Sebastian. Sebastian groans, and laughs open-mouthed, voice jerking as Chris thumps up into him.

That’s it for Chris. The rest of the room falls away as he chases that feeling. All of a sudden he realizes he’s coming, and Sebastian is jerking himself off, squeezing all around Chris as Chris hits the wall hard and throws his head back against the pillow.

Chris’s body jerks through it, all the muscles from his chest up into his throat and jaw tightening as he stops breathing for a minute. His shoulders push him up from the bed, fully exorcised, arm tightening around Sebastian’s waist to hold him still as Chris comes in him.

“Oh yeah,” Sebastian pants, breathing heavy as he looks down at Chris, mouth open. Chris’s entire body twitches once. “That was exactly as good as I thought it was going to be.”

Out of breath, Chris wipes the sweat off his forehead, and flops back against the bed.

Above them a cloud of smoke swirls like they were the ones on fire.

~

_#11 - SEBASTIAN’S BED_

~

Chris lays with his cheek smooshed on Sebastian’s boob.

“What is that supposed to be,” he says.

He hears Sebastian’s hair shift against the pillow as he turns his head to look at what Chris is referring to. Chris frowns at the weird looking statue across the room.

Sebastian laughs a little, chest vibrating underneath Chris’s ear.

“A friend gave me that.” His voice is rough, fucked out. “She’s a lion and a woman.”

She’s ugly. Chris looks at her a little longer, even though there’s plenty of other things to see from his position on Sebastian’s bed. Above them, a replica of the night skies in Hell, below them, the sizzling crackle of fire spread out like carpet. Luckily, the snakes seem to be contained to Sebastian’s office.

Chris picks his head up, and rolls over onto his back. He’s still sweaty.

“Why is it so hot,” he complains, kicking away the blankets bunched up near his feet.

He knows Sebastian likes to be warm, but this is ridiculous. His skin is pink. He’s toasted.

“Hot?” Sebastian picks his head up off the pillow and gives him a weird look. Chris looks back, and raises his eyebrows. A bead of sweat literally drips off his chin, and lands between his pecs. “Shit. I’m sorry, peanut.”

A second later, Chris’s body temperature drops. He feels normal.

“What happened?” Chris looks down at his naked body. “Why am I regular again?”

Sebastian rolls over onto his stomach, ass bouncing as he goes. Chris’s attention immediately jumps the track.

“Been a while since a human was down here,” he shrugs, playing it cool. If Chris didn’t know better, he’d say bringing his butt into it was an on-purpose trick. “I forgot to adjust the thermostat.”

Being that fire is still burning all around, Chris doesn’t know if that’s the full truth.

“You know, I had a full pack of cigarettes in my pocket you burned,” he says, watching Sebastian’s tanned arm slide around his waist. His forearm trails against Chris’s mostly half-hard dick; his thigh twitches.

Sebastian lifts one hand, and pretends to reach for something behind Chris’s ear.

When he pulls his hand back, there’s a fresh pack of cigarettes in his fingers.

“It’s a good party trick,” Sebastian smirks, holding the pack out for Chris. 

As Chris tugs a cigarette out, Sebastian drops his head, and sucks his mouth against Chris’s chest.

~

_#12 - SEBASTIAN’S BED (SECOND TIME)_

~

“What is THAT,” Hayley cackles, jabbing her finger into Chris’s throat.

Chris jerks, surprised by the movement and also at the sudden pain that blooms out from where she poked.

“Ow!” he exclaims. His eyebrows jump high enough she starts laughing all over again.

He clamps one hand over the hickey on his neck, and frowns at her.

“My god, you are just like a little teenager,” she teases. “Who is it?”

Still tender, Chris gently removes his hand from his neck.

“Who is who?” He can play dumb with the best of them.

Hayley rolls her eyes so hard all Chris sees is white.

“I’ll figure you out yet,” she promises.

Chris throws a peanut in her hair and crosses his fingers that she won’t.

~

_#20 - IN THE CAR FOR REAL THIS TIME_

_#34 - RIGHT WHERE THE GARGOYLE CAN SEE_

~

It’s late in the day, sun setting orange and pink over the Pacific.

Chris frowns down at the cleat. If he didn’t know any better…

“Did you break this on purpose?” he asks, squatting down.

He gives it a test wiggle. It looks like someone has loosened the screws that attach its base to the boat deck. Squinting, Chris turns it this way and that.

“I would never.” Sebastian is sprawled out over the built-in sofa behind him.

Not convinced, Chris looks over his shoulder. He catches Sebastian checking out his butt. He turns his head back before Sebastian notices the resulting smirk on his face. Jeez, Chris does like feeling like that.

Still kind of feeling himself, Chris stands up, and goes over to where his now fully stocked toolbox sits. He digs around for a minute, and comes up with the screwdriver he was looking for.

Then he spends the next fifteen minutes fixing the broken cleat.

Sebastian watches him the whole time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, I'll be [hanging out on tumblr tonight](http://sidnihoudini.tumblr.com) answering asks and such.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we go! Just one part left after this.

Mitzi is really not happy with him.

“Since when are you busy on a Friday night?” she asks.

That… is very a good question.

“I’m sorry, Mitzi.” That’s a lie. Chris crosses his fingers behind his back, and hopes his cheeks aren’t turning red. “Something came up.”

The truth is, Sebastian has some kind of extended devil business in Santa Cruz this weekend, and he invited Chris to go with him. Chris said yes, because he didn’t want to say no.

“Look honey,” Mitzi says. She sighs and throws her reading glasses off her nose. Oh, jeez, if she doesn’t ease up on that look, Chris is gonna crumble under the pressure of her pointed gaze. “I don’t know how it happened, but you’re my biggest pull.”

That’s about the nicest thing she’s ever said to him.

“Thanks, Mitzi.” He doesn’t bashfully shuffle his feet, but it’s a close thing.

“Chris. Sweetheart,” she tells him, voice flat. “You can’t tell me on a Thursday that you aren’t gonna show up on a Friday. Your name is on the marquee.”

He knows that. The first time he saw it, those big black block letters, his heart tried to depart from his body. Lucky Sebastian was with him: in one split second, he’d arranged the letters to say ASS INCH REV instead.

“Sorry kitten,” he’d said, staring up at the marquee. “Can’t do a lot with those letters.”

Chris blinks his vision of that afternoon away.

“It’s a family emergency,” he blurts.

Mitzi looks back at him. She’s not buying it. “Your mother?”

“My… brother.” The crossed pointer and middle fingers he’s hiding behind his back squeeze tighter together. Mitzi looks even less convinced, but Chris would rather lie through his teeth than admit he’s skipping town with another man. “He’s not well.”

It’s pretty obvious Mitzi isn’t buying it, but she doesn’t have the evidence she needs to call him out. It’s not like they signed a contract, either. Chris’s loyalty lies with Sebastian. They both seem to realize this at the same time, if the look on her face is any indication.

Instead of pressing Chris further, she rolls her eyes, and waves him away.

Chris practically runs out of the room.

~

Halfway to Santa Cruz, the other cars on the highway start to change. The Cadillacs and Oldmobiles filter out the further north they get, and are replaced by Beetles and Ford pickups with surfboards thrown in the back.

The radio’s been on since they hit Route 1.

“I’m in a car wi-th pea-nut, baby,” Sebastian shout-sings along to the radio.

Chris doesn’t know much about pop music, but he’s pretty sure those aren’t the words.

“I don’t think those are the words,” he says, just to make sure they’re on the same page.

Sebastian ignores him, but he does turn his head and very dramatically sing the next line - correctly, Chris would like to note. He bounces his feet against the dashboard, and throws one fist up into the air.

“Watch the vinyl,” Chris complains.

He sneaks another look over at Sebastian’s legs as best he can without taking his eyes off the road. As soon as Sebastian figured out Chris’s thing for tall sports socks - in _addition to_ his already known boner for short shorts - he’d added “pretend shortstop” to his repertoire of costuming.

The socks… are good. Chris likes how tanned they make Sebastian’s knees look. He wants to stick his fingers under the elastic band.

Sebastian clearly gets a kick out of coming up with fake team names, too. Today he’s got “Swallows” across his chest, cursive letters meticulously felt-stitched into the fabric. On his sleeve, a little red, white and blue bird applique. It’s both the best and worst thing to happen to Chris recently.

He clears his throat, and tries to focus on the road.

“There it is,” Sebastian says, abruptly cutting himself off. He points to something coming up further down the bend in the highway, and drops his Chuck Taylor’ed feet back into the footwell.

Chris squints, trying to see what Sebastian is talking about. The sun is breaking over the mountains just right, gold and yellow, and -

“What is that supposed to be!” he says. 

Dead ahead, on the right side of the highway, is a dusty, deserted parking lot. It isn’t big. Chris starts changing lanes so they can pull off up ahead.

“Shrunken Ed’s.”

Well. That… makes sense. Looking at what he’s looking at now.

At first, Chris thinks it’s a mirage, some trick of the eye. But, sure as shit, as his car rumbles off the pavement of the highway and onto the dusty pullout that leads into the parking lot, he realizes it’s real.

There’s a gigantic foam statue busting out of the top of a rancher style building. The statue is a man - Chris thinks it’s a man - with shoulders and a chest, and two arms going out in two different directions.

His head, however, is small. And topped with a little Troll puff of hair.

As they roll closer, wheels rumbling across the unpaved ground, Chris sees the same name - SHRUNKEN ED’S - painted across the front of the building.

“Seb, what in the world…” he trails off, as the car rolls to a stop.

Sebastian unclicks his seatbelt. “He’s an old friend, kitten.”

“Is he…” Chris looks up at the big bodied, small headed man. “Is that him?”

Those tikis taught him that anything can be someone. Even something you think is just a decoration on the wall. If that gigantic foam man comes alive, Chris doesn’t know if he’ll be able to stop himself from peeling out of the parking lot.

“No,” Sebastian smiles. “He just really likes humans.”

Oh. OH. Chris reels back, flabbergasted.

“Seb!” he hisses. He reaches to put his seatbelt back on. “I’m not walking into some shrunken head patch!”

“He’s not going to hurt you, peanut,” Sebastian promises, getting out of the car. Chris sits with his mouth dropped open and watches, horrified, as Sebastian unfolds to his feet. He pauses to lean down and adjust his socks. “That’s my head on your shoulders.”

Chris can’t help bitching back, “I don’t think so, Seb.”

“Come on,” Sebastian wheedles. “Hermes makes roast beef.”

Well. Chris is pretty hungry. But if anyone tries to steal his head… 

“Fine.” He puts the car in park, and unbuckles his seatbelt again. 

Sebastian grins at him, a truly dazzling number, and swings the passenger side door closed. As they walk across the parking lot, Chris gets one last good look up at the gigantic figure busting out of the roof.

He’s about to say, “I don’t like this, Seb,” when the front door of the building blasts open, and he jumps and drops his keys into the dust instead.

“GORGO,” a supersonic voice booms.

Somewhere over the mountain range around them, something rumbles.

“And who is this!”

Chris is still considering running back to the car. He looks up. In the doorway of Shrunken Ed’s, there’s a five-foot nothing guy wearing an American flag button-up shirt: blue stars on one side, and red stripes on the other.

“God bless America,” Sebastian laughs, bouncing up the stairs.

The guy - Hermes - looks strange, supernatural, even from here. Chris stands a few feet back and listens as Sebastian says something in his dead mother tongue.

“Ahh!” Hermes suddenly booms, shoving Sebastian’s body away. Hermes is physically shorter than Sebastian, but Sebastian still stumbles to the side and almost falls into a planter. “Very nice to meet you!! A human!!”

As Hermes moves closer, Chris’s lizard brain panics. The skin on Hermes’s face is ashy and grey - like dried Halloween paint. This close, Chris also notices how the curls in his hair look crispy, like they’re carved out of gel and styling products.

“Hello!” Chris panic-bumbles. The fear suddenly wins out, and he spins to the side so he can hide behind Sebastian’s body. That’s - that’s a little better. Who can get through the devil? Probably not this guy. Chris extends a limp hand over Sebastian’s shoulder, and offers it to Hermes to shake. “Nice to meet you!”

Sebastian is still brushing the dust and dirt off the sleeve of his t-shirt after his close encounter with the potted plant.

“He’s harmless, kitten,” Sebastian says, unimpressed. “I promise.”

As Hermes accepts Chris’s handshake, he exclaims, “FANTASTIC.”

His features are very stiff. When his expression shifts, the planes of his face move like they’re made out of stone or marble rather than skin and bone. Chris watches carefully.

And stays behind Sebastian.

Hermes shakes his hand for a few pumps too long. It’s edging towards awkward.

“Knock it off,” Sebastian demands. He takes Chris’s hand back for him.

Chris smiles awkwardly at Hermes. Hermes grins back at him.

“After you,” Chris finally offers.

At Chris’s suggestion, Hermes claps Sebastian on the shoulder - launching him forward again - and then turns to lead them inside. 

The building itself is very well-kept. Chris notices the fresh coat of paint as he follows Sebastian following Hermes inside. 

Chris also notices the way that Sebastian’s back muscles shift underneath the t-shirt fabric. Jeez, he really notices. Maybe Sebastian’s suggestion about a hundred miles back to pull off to the side of the highway for a few minutes wasn’t as stupid as Chris said it was. 

He bites his lip and peers around Sebastian’s head. 

“Are those,” he blurts. 

Scary things are happening up ahead. 

Excuse me, Chris wants to say politely. Excuse me, gentlemen, but do you also see the rows and rows of tiny, shrunken heads lining the walls? Did you notice that they have three eyes each?

Chris opens his mouth to say something thoughtful. What actually happens is he shouts, “AHH!”, surprised, and dives forward into Sebastian’s shoulder. A small scary head popped its eyes open right as they walked past!

“Hello!” the head exclaims, tri-eye following Chris as he passes the tiny head by. 

Forehead still smashed into Sebastian’s back, Chris turns, just his face, and peers over at the little guy. He rests his hands on Sebastian’s hips like they’re going through a haunted house. The head next to the first one comes alive, too - and Chris immediately buries his face back against Sebastian. 

He didn’t know he had a phobia of small, shriveled, three-eyed faces, but you learn something new about yourself every day.

“Why do they,” Chris starts, but then cuts himself off to ask, “ _Who_ are they?”

Sebastian’s tail, making a sudden appearance, loops its way around Chris’s waist. Chris feels it curve along his sides like a hug. 

“They are my friends!” Hermes booms ahead. Chris peeks over Sebastian’s shoulder, and watches as Hermes leads them to a booth. “I think it’s great you’re here!!”

The interior of Shrunken Ed’s is decorated like any other family friendly chain restaurant Chris has seen in California… aside from the shrunken head walls. The booths are made out of cheap wood and fabric, and a potted ivy plant hangs from the ceiling over every table.

Hermes shows them to a table. Chris, for the first time, realizes that Hermes has added a denim vest on over his American flag shirt. Both items hang strangely from his frame: when he stands, he looks like he’s trying to impersonate a human.

There’s also a button pinned into the fabric of his vest that says, _OUR ROAST BEEF IS DELICIOUS._

Chris, mouth open, sits beside Sebastian in the booth. 

“They are my friends!” Hermes booms, extending one arm to gesture widely to the room. Chris assumes he’s talking about the head walls. “I told them it would be my pleasure if they joined me for dinner every night! Every night!!

Sebastian conjures up a round of soda. Chris stares at Hermes some more.

“Me and Hermie, kitten. We’re not so different,” Sebastian tells him, sucking soda through his red and white striped straw. That’s debatable to Chris. He watches, a little judgily, as Sebastian settles back against the booth. He belatedly throws one arm up along the back of Chris’s spot. “I collect souls. Hermes, he collects-”

“The seat of the soul!!” he butts in. “Oh, it is a wonderful thing!”

Chris mulls that over.

“Don’t call it that.” Sebastian’s eyes flip to pure black. This is an old argument, then. Chris takes a sip of his soda. “It’s new age stuff, peanut. He collects parts that don’t even exist.”

Chris doesn’t know if he should push this button.

He decides to push the button.

 _Push_ , Chris thinks, as he asks, “What doesn’t exist?”

“A human’s third eye,” Sebastian complains.

Third eye? Chris is pretty sure every human he’s ever met has only had two. He peers around the room again: these little heads definitely have three, and, aside from their little puffs of hair, they do look pretty human from here. 

“YOU are new age!” Hermes slams both hands on the table top, making their drinks shake. Sebastian sticks his thumb to his nose, and wiggles his fingers. As he pulls his hand away, his horns appear. “Do not wave your hand at me!”

Sebastian rolls his eyes. Chris watches the two of them bitch at each other, gaze sliding to and fro like he’s following a tennis match. 

“What are you gonna do, take the eye in my brain?” Sebastian taunts. 

All of a sudden, there’s a sizzle. And then there is in fact a third eye blinking in the middle of Sebastian’s forehead. Chris’s mouth drops open. The eye blinks like a normal eye, but it’s slightly out of sequence with the other two.

Sebastian must see the flabbergasted look on Chris’s face. Without hesitating, he reaches a hand up, and touches his own forehead. It results in him poking himself in the third eye, and immediately spinning into a rage.

“Get it out!” He yells across the table. All of the lights in the room flicker. Chris sinks a little lower in the booth, bottom lip stretching to show his teeth as he cringes. “Hermes!”

Hermes looks pretty smug with himself. 

“Look who cannot help himself now,” he says, crossing his arms over his chest.

Sebastian’s eyes are full-time black now, no pupil or iris to be had. Chris doesn’t mean to, but under the table he maybe gets a little boned up. It’s dangerous and exciting. 

They stare at one another. Hermes doesn’t move. Sebastian’s bonus eye goes absolutely nowhere. Chris thinks it’s kinda pretty. 

All of a sudden, heads start lighting on fire. Chris jerks around, surprised when he hears the now familiar pop-hiss, followed by a tiny scream.

“Do not light my friends on fire!” Hermes exclaims, panicked.

Chris, shocked, turns back and smacks the hell out of Sebastian’s arm. Those tiny faces!

“Put that out,” he demands. Sebastian is still staring across the table at Hermes, mouth a straight line, jaw ticing with how tight he’s clenching his teeth.

Sebastian doesn’t blink. Another three heads light on fire. And then, all of a sudden, Sebastian is no longer there. 

Chris is looking at nothing. Mouth open, he looks down at the seat. 

There’s a regular looking frog sitting there. 

“Did you…” Chris trails off, and looks across the table at Hermes. 

Hermes looks grumpy. He crosses his arms again. 

“Next time I will tell his father,” is all he says. 

Chris, too surprised to be scared, picks Sebastian up off the seat. 

~

“I will turn him back,” Hermes promises. 

On the table, there are two plates full of roast beef, mashed potatoes, and cooked veggies. One is in front of Hermes, and the other is in front of Chris. 

It’s delicious. The best home cooked meal Chris has ever had. 

On Chris’s shoulder, Sebastian, in frog form, sits quietly. He croaks under his breath. Every time he tries to hop off, Chris patiently sets him back on his shoulder. 

“I don’t have anywhere to be,” Chris says, enjoying the peace and quiet. 

He digs his fork into the mashed potato.

It’s a shame Sebastian is missing this, but you just don’t light a man’s shrunken friends on fire.

~

“Come back soon,” Hermes calls, seeing them off. He waves theatrically, and, to Sebastian, adds, “I will help you shrink your head next time. Perhaps one day we will make it regular-sized.”

Chris grins - trying not to laugh - and waves back at Hermes. 

Up ahead, Sebastian is still looks pretty sore about things. His tail swings as he walks, pissed off.

~

_#29 - IN THE CAR ON THE SIDE OF THE HIGHWAY_

_#31 - AT THE FOOT OF MY BED (SPICY)_

_#37 - ALL OVER MY TV CHAIR :(_

~

The little bell jingles above the door.

“I have not seen you around lately, my friend!” Yash greets.

He’s grinning, though, so Chris knows he doesn’t mean anything by it.

Chris smiles back.

“That thing you told me,” he says, walking up to the counter. Yash is already retrieving his cigarettes from the shelves behind him. “That thing about confidence. It works.”

Yash sets the cigarettes down theatrically, and then claps his hands together. 

“I told you!” he exclaims, proud. “Confidence!”

~

_#49 - ON TOP OF THE HOLLYWOOD SIGN (“W”)_

_#54 - IN THE MORNING RIGHT AFTER WE WOKE UP_

~

Chris hasn’t been to the drive-in since he was a kid. 

Last time he’d been was 1955. He was a teenager, his mother made his brother come with him to play chaperone, and he almost - almost - kissed a girl in the backseat of her parents car. 

The same tin sign that reads _Leave your girdle at home_ in loopy, drunken handwriting is still hanging near the entrance. Chris hangs out the drivers side window as he pays for their tickets, and asks for a bag of popcorn. 

“You know how to treat a girl right, peanut,” Sebastian tells him, taking the bag when Chris hands it over. 

There aren’t many other cars here. Seems like everyone is over at the mall these days. Chris navigates the car into one of the back spots. It’s nothing like Chris remembers it, but, still better than the drive-in over on Pico Boulevard. Last Chris heard, it turned into a porno theatre first and then closed last fall. 

Sebastian would have liked the one on Pico. 

“Ooh. Fresh!” Sebastian is eating popcorn and staring into the window of the car across from them. It’s dusky, but those hand prints in the fogged up windows don’t mean anything else.

Chris smacks Sebastian, and then reaches for a handful of popcorn. 

“Don’t stare.” He takes a delicate amount of popcorn and cradles it against his chest so it doesn’t spill everywhere. “It’s rude!”

Sebastian either listens to Chris or loses interest in the necking teenagers: sometimes it’s hard to tell. 

~

This was… not the greatest idea Chris has ever had. 

The newspapers have been calling this movie “an exercise in terror” and “a creation of disgust and fright.” He should have seen this coming. 

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is, in fact, not for the faint of heart.

Chris sends a wild-eyed look over at Sebastian. Their popcorn is almost gone, Sebastian’s in up to his elbow.

In the driver's seat, Chris tugs at the neck of his shirt, trying to get some air. There’s a lot of blood. The screaming is getting to him. Oh god. His breathing starts to get faster. His foot jerks against the floor, legs flooding with adrenaline. 

He reaches for the window crank, just to try and give himself a couple inches of fresh air.

He just needs a little bit of fresh air.

“Kitten?” Sebastian asks. It sounds like he’s a million miles away.

Chris’s chest is now heaving. He didn’t realize he’d closed his eyes and then kept them that way. He fumbles at the door blindly, trying to find the crank. Suddenly it’s a thousand degrees in here, but not in the cozy way Sebastian’s bedroom always is. 

“I’m…” hyperventilating.

He gets the window down finally, but it isn’t enough. The part of his brain driving the panic bus tells him to open the door and get out, but he doesn’t want to do that. 

The car is safer. He’s safe here with Sebastian. 

Calm down, Chris. 

“Tell me what to do, peanut,” Sebastian is saying to him, half up off the seat with his head bumping against the ceiling.

Chris belatedly realizes he’s having a full episode. Here come the flashbacks. 

It’s a mess. He’s very suddenly, inexplicably, a mess. The audio is still playing through the FM receiver in Chris’s car radio. Every scream, every roar of the chainsaw, sends Chris backwards, until he’s tumbling through jungle underbrush, machete wounds, and losing his battle buddies. 

Chris has never had a real friend in his life, but if anyone might have been, it was the men he lost in Vietnam.

He realizes he’s crying first.

Then he realizes The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is no longer playing on the screen in front of them. People are getting out of their cars, looking around for a drive-in employee to complain to. Disney’s animated version of Sword in the Stone flickers across the wind-rippled screen instead of the horror flick printed on their tickets. 

Chris turns his head, one hand still clutching his chest, and looks through his window. It’s - raining. People are still walking around, trying to find who’s responsible for the change in programming, but now they’ve got newspapers held open over their heads. 

“Kitten,” Sebastian demands. 

Dazed, Chris looks over at him, and asks, “Are you doing this?”

“Am I-“ Sebastian’s gaze snaps away from Chris’s face. He looks past him, to the world outside the car.

The rain abruptly stops.

“You were,” Chris pants. He leans his head back against the seat, and tries to take a breath. He swallows and reaches one hand up to wipe at his eyes. 

Sebastian is still staring at him.

“Kitten.” All the playfulness is gone from his voice. “Does that happen often?”

Chris’s body is still on the train to panic town. Even though he’s on this side of the mountain, coming down, his hands and thighs haven’t gotten the message. His muscles twitch and shake, drunk on adrenaline. 

“Sometimes,” he admits. His voice is still tighter than it should be. “Not as much as I used to.”

Someone finally cuts the picture on the projector. Chris leans forward and reaches for the ignition. They should get out of here. Sebastian is still staring at him. Chris can feel it without looking. 

~

“Gross,” he frowns. 

Sebastian looks up from where he’s arranging a bevy of items in what seems to be a very specific order.

For now, Chris is ignoring the little bowl of blood waiting at Sebastian’s elbow. He doesn’t wanna know. 

“What?” Sebastian smirks. He sets a little piece of see through stone beside something carved into a rock. “I’m practically doing my taxes, peanut.”

Chris points to the little sprig. It’s the first thing he watched Sebastian set down in his evening tableau. 

“Rosemary,” he grimaces.

For a minute, Sebastian doesn’t say anything. He reaches for the little bowl of blood, and uses his fingers to drip a few blobs in a triangular formation on the table. He sets a tiny animal bone - bird, maybe, it’s delicate - between the regular rock and the clear one. 

Then he takes a step back, and crosses his arms over his chest. 

“Out of everything on this altar,” he starts, raising one eyebrow. “You have a problem with the rosemary?”

Chris scratches his boob and passionately declares, “I hate rosemary!”

~

_#82 - BEHIND THE COMEDY STORE BEFORE WORK_

~ 

Chris surreptitiously tries to adjust his dick in his pants.

“Oh, good, you’re here,” Mitzi greets, catching him by the inside of the elbow the minute he steps inside The Store. Chris’s face goes red. “I gotta talk to you. In private.”

Oh, god. That doesn’t sound good.

“Am I in trouble?” he asks, bumbling along behind her. He tucks his shirt back in.

Mackie, at the bar, holds both hands up and shrugs when Chris shoots him a help-me look on his way through to Mitzi’s office.

He follows her inside, and rubs at the hickey he can feel flaming up on his neck.

“You’re gonna flip your lid,” she promises, closing the door behind them. As Chris takes an awkward seat, Mitzi shuffles around her desk, pausing to twist closed the venetian blinds on the wall. “You want a drink?”

Chris swallows.

“No. Do I? No.” He steels himself. “You’re freaking me out.”

Mitzi sits down, and looks at him seriously.

“Carson called,” she says. Chris’s heart stops. “He wants you on the show.”

No. Nope. No. Not even a little bit.

The look on his face really must be something. Mitzi offers him a cigarette.

“I’m not… ready,” he manages.

Mitzi shrugs. “They want you anyway.”

“I don’t have any new jokes,” he objects. 

Mitzi rolls her eyes. “Never stopped Carlin.”

“I’ll make a fool out of myself,” he whispers. 

Mitzi smiles a little bit. “Nothing new there.”

He doesn’t realize his cigarette is practically gone until he almost burns his fingers. Jesus, he barely remembers putting it in his mouth. He’s gotta find Sebastian. Did he do this? Is this some kind of… sleeping with the devil bonus?

Chris taps his cigarette over the ashtray on Mitzi’s desk before he drops it all over himself.

“I don’t know, Mitzi.” He watches the ash fall.

Bombing on live television just… it isn’t the same as getting a beer thrown at him on stage here at home. If he made a fool out of himself in front of Johnny Carson, well…

Well.

“Let me think it over,” he frowns.

~

Scarlett’s mouth drops open.

“So you said yes, right?”

That’s typical. Chris should have been expecting that. He rolls his eyes, and then presses his lips into a straight line. Yash asked him the same thing earlier, when he stopped by to get a pack of cigarettes and a hot dog.

He looks down into his food - Chinese, Friday night tradition - and sighs, “I told her I’d think about it.”

Scarlett snorts, and pulls out a piece of broccoli with her chopsticks.

“Only you,” she teases.

Chris bristles and stabs his fork into a chunk of sweet and sour pork. It’s fine for everyone else, he thinks, tossing the piece of meat towards Baby Cinnamon. Baby Cinnamon still doesn’t know how to catch, so it slaps against the floor with a wet plop, and then Baby Cinnamon edges himself along the floor towards it.

Maybe Chris doesn’t want to do it at all. Maybe he’s perfectly content to sit here, and eat Chinese food with Scarlett, and wait for Sebastian to get back from his… life coaching session.

Maybe he’d rather watch TV, and leave Carson where he’s supposed to be: on the television screen.

He looks at Scarlett.

“It’s because of Sebastian, right?” He knows it is, but he wants to hear her say it. “I didn’t earn it. I just traded my soul for it.”

Scarlett shrugs, and reaches for her can of Coke. 

“It’s a set of dominos. Sebastian knocked the first one down, but he didn’t set the game up.”

She takes a sip, and smiles at him.

Well, that’s informative. Chris grimaces back at her. 

“But he made me funny,” he counters. 

She shrugs. “That doesn’t guarantee success.”

Chris watches her, waiting to see if she’ll admit to pulling his leg. Jeez. She looks pretty serious. She sucks something out of her front teeth, and stabs another piece of broccoli. He doesn’t know how truthful she’s being. It’s nice of her to say, though.

“Twilight Zone?” he asks, trying to change the subject.

Then he gets up off the couch to change the channel on the TV.

~

_#88 - IN THE SHOWER (BURNED MYSELF)_

~

Wow, Chris thinks, looking down at the list.

It’s getting long. It’s really long, actually. Has it already been so long?

He writes #89 down on the line below his entry for #88, and tucks his pencil behind his ear.

Maybe he won’t bring it up to Sebastian just yet. Maybe he’ll give it a few more weeks.

~

“I’ve been thinking, kitten,” Sebastian tells him.

Chris gives him a look. Last time Sebastian said he’d been thinking, the kitchen ended up full of baby bats. He turns his attention back to the magazine he’s flipping through.

Sebastian continues, “I can take that stuff out of your head.”

His fingers pause over the page. There’s a moment of hesitation before his hand moves again, thumb catching the page to turn. Hey, look, an ad for leisure suits. Chris has always wondered what he’d look like all dolled up in one of those. 

“Earth to peanut,” Sebastian calls. 

Chris rolls his eyes and looks over. Sebastian is on the other side of the kitchen galley, wearing a strand of pearls and a dress as he makes a couple of sandwiches for lunch.

“I don’t wanna talk about it.” He looks back down at the leisure suit ad, and flips the page. Scarlett has already been through this one, she’s turned down the corner of a lipstick ad.

Out of the corner of Chris’s eye, he sees Sebastian’s belly press against the edge of the table.

“I can make it better, kitten,” he says, making a show out of leaning over and sliding a sandwich in front of Chris. Peanut butter and jelly. “I didn’t know.”

Chris leans back in the kitchen chair, and replies, “Nobody does.”

There’s a sizzle. Chris isn’t surprised to see a little curl of fire coming out of the opened peanut butter jar.

It’s all well and good for Sebastian to offer to take that stuff outta Chris’s head. Penance, Chris thinks. That’s what the flashbacks are. It’s why they keep happening: reminders of every bad thing he’s done, reminders of the young, innocent blood on his hands all because he decided to volunteer for the draft. 

He doesn’t expect Sebastian to understand that. But he won’t let Sebastian take what is rightfully his load to bear. 

“What’s with the dress?” Chris asks, trying to change the subject. He takes a break from his magazine, and a bite of his sandwich. 

It’s pretty good. He’s glad he got one before the peanut butter got burnt up.

“The pearls didn’t go with my jeans,” Sebastian replies. “Eat your sandwich.”

He’s not sure if Sebastian is pulling his leg. He eats half his peanut butter sandwich, though, and considers it. 

~

_#98 - AGAINST THE KITCHEN COUNTER_

~

“Hey!” Mitzi shouts at him that night. “You gotta let me know by tomorrow!”

Chris waves her off, and continues on his way to the bathroom. Jeez, his heart is jumping all over the place just at the thought of saying “yes” to her. 

He pees in the urinal, and then washes his hands in the tiny sink. His mother called him earlier today, sometime while he was at Sebastian’s. Her message said it’d been two months since Chris had been to see her. 

Two months.

As he rubs the soap over his hands, he shakes his head and tries to get his thoughts together. She would think Carson is a bad idea. She’d take one look at the wild expression in his eyes, and tell him to come home. Before Sebastian, Chris might have. 

But before Sebastian, he never would have been offered a gig on Carson’s stage. 

Signing, Chris dries his hands off on the sides of his jeans. They ran out of paper towels a couple weeks ago and nobody has replaced them yet. 

He signed that deal with Sebastian because he wanted to be funny. Sebastian gave him what he wanted - Chris is funny now. The Store is sold out every Friday and Saturday nights, the two nights Chris performs on the main stage. He makes more money in those two nights than he ever did working for pennies when Mitzi would throw him a bone. 

The door swings closed behind him as he steps back into the main room and heads towards the bar. Mackie is there, same as he always is on Chris’s nights, with a pick in his hair and a fringed vest stretched over his shoulders. 

“Look at those eyes!” Mackie exclaims, the second he gets a look at Chris’s expression. “Oh, I didn’t realize getting a Carson spot turns you into a puppy dog!”

Chris slides onto a stool and palms the sticky bar top. He remembers leaning way over the bar every night so he could see the stage better. 

“I didn’t get it,” he says, because he doesn’t want it getting back to Mitzi that he’s considering accepting. “I just got offered it.”

“Well la-di-da, Mr. Comedy,” Mackie smirks. He serves Chris a beer. “Why didn’t you immediately say yes, again?”

Chris frowns. 

“I don’t think I deserve it.”

Well, there it is. He wasn’t expecting that to tumble out of his mouth, but there’s no taking a word back now. Mackie raises his eyebrows, and gives Chris a look.

“You’re gonna have to walk me through that one, pal,” Mackie tells him.

Chris couldn’t do that, even if he wanted to.

“Look at me, Mack,” he shrugs, twisting his beer around. “I’m not cut out for TV.”

Mackie gives him a look.

“Blue eyes, perfect teeth?” he asks, cocking an eyebrow. “That whole American Ken doll thing you got going on? Looks about right to me, man.”

Chris runs a hand over his buzz cut.

“Other people deserve it more,” he frowns.

The sentence is only half out of his mouth when Hayley plops down on the bar stool to his right. She reaches for a peanut, cracks into it, and asks, “Other people deserve what, exactly?”

“This guy’s spot on Carson,” Mackie supplies, selling him out.

Chris boggles at Mackie, betrayed. Mackie just raises his eyebrows back, a serene, knowing look on his face. There’s a reason why Chris hasn’t said anything about it to Hayley yet. He knows just how she’ll-

“You’re kidding me!” She cackles for a minute, and then looks, wide-eyed, at Chris. “I mean, obviously! But that shouldn’t stop _you_ from doing it!”

“Thanks,” Chris frowns. He’s grasping at straws now and they all know it. “What if I bomb?”

Hayley shrugs. “What if you don’t?”

He and Hayley stare at each other for a long minute. Her eyebrows inch higher and higher up her forehead, until she’s grimacing at Chris with two gigantic, scary eyes.

Chris backs down.

“Hey!” Mackie shouts, making him jump. He looks at Mackie, startled, and realizes that Mackie is trying to get the attention of someone behind them. Chris turns, and is unsurprised to see Mitzi on the other side of the room. “Boy wonder is in! Call the man! Let him know!”

He can’t bear to see the look on Mitzi’s face. Chris groans and covers his eyes with his hands.

“Well.” Hayley’s mouth is full of peanuts. “That’s decided, then.”

Chris feels vaguely sick. He clutches his beer.

“Yeah,” he swallows. “I guess it is.”

~

Later that night, Chris has forgotten about Carson.

Thoroughly.

Sebastian is wearing his roller skates. Sebastian still has his roller skates on his feet, even though he is no longer skating anywhere, and Chris should really be a nice man and take them off, and yet-

“Oh, fuck yeah,” Sebastian laughs, forehead thunking against the wall when Chris gives him a good one. “Kitten, ah, c’mon, kitten, fuck me good.”

Like punctuation, Sebastian’s roller skate shoots out from underneath his weight. Chris grabs Sebastian under the thigh, and hikes him back up the wall. He presses his forehead to the nape of Sebastian’s neck, and gasps his way through something that might almost be called breathing.

He gets Sebastian to come first. Then he wipes his hand off on Sebastian’s lower belly, and gets to holding his hip instead.

Sebastian’s toe bumper bangs into the floorboard. He laughs again and then groans, really pouring his ass back to Chris as he rolls his hips and hangs onto the plaster. 

“Oh god,” Chris gasps, eyes pinching closed as he feels it right there. He wraps his arms around Sebastian’s chest from behind and presses them close from shoulder to thigh as he comes, hips flexing, lower back muscles spasming.

When he’s done, he groans into the warm spot at the crook of Sebastian’s shoulder, and then pulls back to press a kiss there.

“I didn’t know the whole rollergirl thing did it for you, peanut,” Sebastian teases, but he’s still out of breath so it doesn’t quite have the same sting. Chris pulls out. “I - ah. I would have brought my knee pads.”

“Maybe next time,” Chris grins, as Sebastian turns around and pulls him in for a real kiss on the mouth. Sebastian still tastes like the dirty shit they were getting up to earlier. Legend has it Chris kinda likes that. “Would your head fit in a helmet?”

Sebastian squints at him. 

“You think you’re funny,” he accuses, as Chris laughs some more and heads across his bedroom to retrieve a come rag. Sebastian heckles after him, “I want a towel!”

Like Chris is going to waste a perfectly clean towel. If Seb wants a spa experience he can conjure that up himself. Chris is going to get a ratty old t-shirt from the basket in the bathroom, and that’s what they’re going to-

“Peanut, you Jezebel!” Sebastian calls. Chris hears one of his roller skates rolling across the wood floor: this building slants to the east. Chris assumes Sebastian is out of the one that’s made a getaway. He comes back out of the bathroom. Sebastian looks over at him, sheet of paper in one hand. “Is this a list of places we’ve boned?”

Chris looks at the list in Sebastian’s hand. He drags the dirty t-shirt over his belly. 

“Kind of,” he waffles. 

Sebastian’s roller skate rolls within arms length, so Chris puts out a foot to stop it before it rumbles over his bare toes. 

He doesn’t say anything else. He waits, watching and wiping off the come, as Sebastian reads the full list. 

He sees the exact moment Sebastian reaches the end of the paper. 

_#100 ______________  
_I’M FREE!!!!!!_

Sebastian flinches like he’s been struck. His eyes flicker up to meet Chris’s. Chris, not knowing what else to do, offers up the t-shirt. 

That… that was the wrong call. Sebastian’s eyes flip to black. 

“What’s this supposed to be?” he asks. He is really not entertained, Chris thinks, panicking. 

Before he can get his dick sizzled off or worse, he reaches for the pair of underwear he left on the bed. 

“It’s just a record, Seb,” Chris tries, aiming for casual. 

Smoke starts to drift around Sebastian’s feet. Chris stumbles into his undies. When he looks up at Sebastian again, he’s fully dressed - a pair of red jeans, a white shirt. Tail, horns. The whole nine.

It really looks sharp with the black eyes but-

“Seb,” Chris panics, as the smoke really starts filling the room. He waves a hand in front of his face, trying not to choke.

The fire alarm goes off.

He coughs and holds the shirt that was still in his hand over his mouth. When he realizes which shirt it is, he AHHs and throws it across the room, wiping off his face with one hand for good measure. 

Then he realizes that little pieces of the floorboards are on fire. He looks over at Sebastian, ready to demand he put them out. 

Sebastian is gone. No evidence left that he was ever here, not even ash or bone. 

“Fuck,” he swears, reaching for his jeans as the banging starts at his apartment door. 

~

_#100 - IN ROLLER SKATES_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seb is singing [In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIVe-rZBcm4) while they're in the car!
> 
> Liking it so far? Leave me a comment, or [come say hay](http://sidnihoudini.tumblr.com) on tumbls.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here she is!! The very last part of Satan in the Suburbs :)

Out on the sidewalk, Chris watches his apartment go up in flames.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” the lady in front of him says. She tisks, and then leans to the side, tilting her face closer to the ear of the woman she’s standing with. Conspiratorial. “The guy over there said the fire was completely contained to one apartment. Didn’t even melt the wallpaper in the hallway.”

Her friend shakes her head, awestruck, and then asks, “Who lives there?”

“Me.” The word is out of Chris’s mouth before he can stop it. “I lived there.”

~

The crazy weather starts up as Chris is turning the ignition over in his car.

“What the…” He leans over his steering wheel, and peers up at the dark sky. Even over the murmur of his engine, he can hear rumbling off in the distance. All of a sudden, the sky flashes bright, lighting up the mountains in the distance. Chris sighs. “Shit.”

Torrential rain starts to pour as Chris gets on the highway. He squints through the windshield, and turns his headlights up as bright as they’ll go. There are lines and lines of cars that have pulled off to either side of the highway, native Angelenos just like Chris who are too scared or inexperienced to drive in the rain.

Chris pulls into the marina parking lot twenty minutes later, maniacally throwing the door open before he tumbles out, still barefoot and wearing nothing but his jeans.

“SEB,” he yells, banging on Sebastian’s front door. The loose house number falls like it always does, turning house number 666 into a 669. Chris looks at it wildly, and then smacks both hands against the door again. He spits water out of his mouth. “SEB!”

When it becomes painfully obvious that Chris is out on this dock alone, he takes a step back, and rubs both hands up over his face, trying to get some of the rain water off.

~

“What in the world happened to you?” Hayley asks. She steps to the side, and lets Chris into her front hall. “Where are your _shoes_?”

Miserable, Chris shuffles inside.

Hayley’s mouth hangs open. She leaves one hand on the door, and watches as Chris glumly unfolds the newspaper he brought in from his car. He sets it on the ground, and then gingerly steps onto it. The paper immediately turns soggy and sticks to his damp feet.

“I don’t want to ruin your floors,” he says, glum.

“You.” Hayley points one finger at him sternly, before she realizes she’s still holding the front door wide open. She cuts herself off, shuts the door, and throws the lock. Then she turns back to Chris and points the same finger at him. “You’re going to tell me what’s going on.”

Chris nods.

~

She takes pity on him, though, and shows him where the shower is.

“The pipe rattles, don’t let that stop you though.” The curtain screeches against the metal rod as she pushes it open, and hands over a folded towel and a pair of tracksuit pants. “Sorry, they might be a little small. I’ll find you something for up top, too.”

With that, she tweaks his nipple, makes a funny noise, and winks.

~

Hayley’s got the television on when Chris gets out of the shower.

“Is this your building?” she asks, hearing him the second his weight makes the floorboard at the doorway creak. “It is, isn’t it?”

Rubbing the towel over his head, Chris comes in, and props his butt against the arm of the couch she’s sitting on. These tracksuit pants are… a little tight, but strangely enough, fit perfectly around the thighs. 

“Yeah, it is.” He can’t help sighing. The towel hangs, damp, from his hands.

Jesus, look at that. Fire is still pouring out of the opened windows - there’s his bedroom, and that one, that was the window in his kitchen. The reporter standing on the ground below, on the other side of a police tape line holding back a crowd of people, is saying that the local fire department is still working to contain the flames.

So far they have no word on what caused the fire to start.

“That’s weird, isn’t it?” Hayley is squinting at the screen. She leans forward as the tracking on the feed jumps, wobbling the edges of the frame. “Why hasn’t it burned through to the other units yet?”

Chris looks at the faces in the crowd behind the reporter.

“I don’t know,” he says honestly. When he realizes that not one of the men have the features he’s looking for, his gaze trails back to the other side of the screen. The flames look unstoppable. “Everything I owned was in that apartment.”

He feels Hayley squeeze his shoulder, trying to be kind.

~

Chris sleeps on the couch, in the tracksuit pants that Hayley gave him, underneath a throw she pulls off the armchair.

Outside, the monsoon rages on.

~

The morning’s newspaper slaps against the kitchen table in front of Chris with a startling smack.

_S ALAMEDA ST APARTMENT SUITE IN ASHES, RESIDENTS UNHARMED._

Chris reads the headline, and then looks up at Hayley.

“Funny thing.” She stirs her mug of tea. “The fire chief says the rain should have put the fire out. The weatherman from channel eleven says the rain should be about five states over, in Mississippi.”

Jeez. That’s a good point. Chris opens his mouth to reply.

“It’s good for the trees,” creaks out.

She narrows her eyes at him. The spoon clinks against the inside of her mug.

“It is, isn’t it,” Hayley acknowledges.

Well, that’s a very scary way to agree with someone. Chris shrugs, aiming for a casual _what can you do?_ and then leans over to peer at the newspaper story for a long minute.

Hayley watches him.

“The police think it might be an arsonist,” Chris says, being careful not to look up at her. He traces his finger along the bottom of the line he’s reading to demonstrate how truthful he’s being. “They’re going to investigate.”

There’s a long pause. Then,

“Yes, I guess you could call him that, couldn’t you?” Hayley wonders out loud.

~

Chris spends most of the day at the LAPD Central Community Police Station.

They take his statement. He sits in a tiny metal folding chair, holding a tiny cup of coffee, and tries to answer their questions instead of asking his own. When one detective asks Chris if he knows who could have done this, Chris makes his eyes extra big, and says, “I have no idea.”

Afterwards, Hayley picks him up in his own car. 

~

“Come on,” Chris frowns, vigorously dialing Scarlett’s direct line again. She’s gotta be there. At this point, Chris would accept a call from the gargoyle. “Pick up.”

He stares at the television - on mute - and stands there holding the phone to one thigh as the line rings out. It isn’t until the call goes dead that he sighs, pulls the receiver away from his ear, and presses it to his face instead. 

Sebastian is OUT THERE, somewhere. And here’s Chris. Not where Sebastian is.

He’s been flipping between infomercials and The Midnight Special since Hayley left for her set at the Store an hour ago. Chris fidgets, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

It’s probably not a good idea to try and conjure up a grumpy Satan, but…

“Okay.” Chris is talking to himself now. It’s been a while since he did that. “Okay, okay, okay.”

He hangs up the phone to end the call, and then brings it back up to his ear. Cradling the receiver between his shoulder and chin, he carefully dials the star sign, and then 6-6-6 into the rotary dial.

And waits.

“Graveyard dirt,” Hayley says from the doorway. 

The body of the phone crashes against the floor with a clang as Chris jumps two feet in the air, and yells, “AHHH!!”

He clutches his chest with one hand, and squeezes at the spot where his heart is trying to beat through his skin. 

“I didn’t take you for such a nervous nellie.” Hayley grimaces at him and raises one eyebrow. “I thought you were in the army.”

“I THOUGHT YOU WERE GONE,” he bitches back, except the adrenaline makes his voice come out all pinched and tortured.

Hayley gives him a look, these gigantic brown eyes and a little tilted smirk. The “I was” is implied in the twist of her lips. If Chris didn’t already know she’d signed a deal with Sebastian, he’d wonder if she was his sister.

“When it was he and I,” she tells Chris carefully, doing absolutely nothing to convince him that she can’t read his mind. “I would summon him with graveyard dirt.”

That… sounds illegal. Chris wrinkles his brow, and watches as Hayley starts to dig around in her bookcase. She pops up onto her toes, and finally pulls a small, short box off of the top shelf. 

“Graveyard dirt?” Chris asks, watching skeptically as she flips the little box open, and gingerly pokes around inside of it with one finger. “How did you figure that out?”

Hayley glances up and gives him a flat look. 

“I read a book.” With that, she flips the box closed with one hand, and extends the other to Chris. Without thinking, Chris holds his palm out for her. “It said to use a photo of myself, a bit of Graveyard dirt, and this.”

As Chris takes his hand back, he frowns. On his palm sits a small, delicate piece of…

“It’s the bone of a black cat,” Hayley explains. 

Chris, without thinking, throws the piece of bone clear across the room. 

“You bloody IDIOT,” Hayley exclaims, abruptly punching him in the shoulder. “I’ve carried that around as insurance for twenty years!”

Rubbing his upper arm, Chris grimaces and kneejerk apologizes, “I’m sorry!”

He didn’t mean to! It just-

“Silly bugger.” Hayley is bent over, looking for the little piece of bone. When she doesn’t immediately find it, she rages back into a standing position, and yells at Chris, “That made it ACROSS THE OCEAN, you know!”

Oh, jeez. Chris runs a hand through his hair. All he can think to say is, “I’m sorry!” again.

Hayley eventually finds the bone - unharmed - in the crack of her arm chair. When she walks back over to Chris, she holds it protectively in the cage of her hand. 

“There’s a crossroads not twenty minutes from here,” she explains. “Nobody will be out at this time of night.”

This time, Chris picks up the delicate curl of bone from her hand, and studies it with a narrowed gaze. This poor little English cat. 

He thinks about Hayley - twenty years ago Hayley - sitting in a dusty old library by herself. He can see the mark on this bone where it was broken. Where Hayley, with her small little hands, decided to snap this bone in half just in case she needed it further down the road. 

“I made him promise not to sign deals with little kids anymore,” Chris tells her. 

It’s not exactly the whole truth, but it’s the most Chris has ever said out loud. Pained, he offers her a weary smile. 

Hayley meets his gaze. 

“I don’t regret it.” Her voice does not betray her. “Not for one minute.”

~

An hour later, Chris is wearing his ladies sneakers and a rain jacket for anonymity as he straddles a freshly packed grave. 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he chants, spitting rainwater out of his mouth.

At the edge of the graveyard, Hayley idles in the driver’s seat of Chris’s car. 

~

Chris doesn’t have a photo of himself. He adds his only piece of photo identification - his veterans ID card - to the box. 

~

“I don’t know what to say,” Chris says quietly.

He stares out the passenger side window. At the end of the block, where all four roads intersect, he watches the neon sign of a Thai restaurant window blink. Across from the restaurant, an instrument rental showroom, oversized and heavy with its art deco decorations affixed firmly on all four corners of the building.

On the third corner, the television repair shop. 

This is the crossroads. Chris had been picturing something far more… remote. The desert, maybe. Hot. Hellish.

“It’s not complicated,” Hayley tells him. “Close your eyes and make a wish.”

Chris snorts, and reaches for the door handle.

~

For the first few minutes, Chris stands awkwardly with both hands in his pockets. 

He looks down at the box full of things supposed to conjure Sebastian right before his very eyes, and waits. And waits. And waits. 

At the five minute mark, Chris looks worriedly over his shoulder at Hayley. Still in the car, she whisks her finger around until he turns back to face the box. He looks down at it, at the little cat bone and the graveyard dirt and his own ghoulish face staring back up at him. 

~

By the thirty minute mark, Chris is starting to feel a little bit desperate. 

He jogs back across the empty street - what if he’s been waiting on the wrong side? - and shakes the box around, jangling the contents inside. Maybe he didn’t… mix it right. 

Chris stands in front of the television repair shop window. He closes his eyes and wishes upon a star. He holds onto the tiny box with all his might. He taps his heels together. 

“Come on, Seb!” he grits, frustrated. 

~

It’s a full hour before he retreats back to the car. 

Hayley is asleep with her face smooshed against the steering wheel when he yanks the passenger side door open. The sound startles her awake, and she pops up, wiping drool off of her mouth with one delicate thumb.

“Well?” She watches as he sits down. “Any luck?”

The look he shoots her makes her hold both hands up like he’s drawn a gun. Swallowing tight, Chris closes his eyes, and drops his head back against the seat. 

~

“I can’t believe we’re doing this.”

Hayley is nursing a coffee and smiling at the bench of old people who are also waiting for the library to open. She keeps that smile on her face as she turns her head, and raises her eyebrows at Chris.

“Have you got any better ideas?” she asks. “I had ONE, but you went and got your number blocked.”

Chris frowns at her. “He didn’t block my number.”

She rolls her eyes - pointedly, Chris would like to add - and turns back to face the door. Chris watches, a little grossed out, as she makes eyes with a ninety year old man and accepts a hard candy from his pocket. 

They loiter around, Hayley sucking on her butterscotch, until a mousy lady in a green plaid dress appears in the cheap church glass window beside the door. Chris waves at her out of habit, then jerks his hand into his pocket when Hayley elbows him in the side.

“You go for the book,” Hayley tells him. “I’ll handle ole Marjorie.”

While the founding members of their early morning crew make a break for today’s newspapers, Chris hustles by them and beelines right for the card catalog. He starts pulling drawers open, not sure what he should be looking under.

Devil? Satan? Sorcery?

“Aha,” he says to himself, flipping through the S’s.

_THE GOSPEL OF SATAN._

He rips the yellowing card out of the drawer - not a lot of people interested in learning about Satan, then - and looks back over his shoulder. Hayley is, in fact, handling Marjorie. Mostly by draping her boobs all over the circulation desk.

Sorry, Marjorie, Chris thinks. He looks between the numbers on the card, and the numbers posted at the end of each aisle.

The book is shelved in a desolate corner, pages wedged between a book that no longer has a spine title, and an oversized picture book about the Vatican. Chris wiggles it out, looks over his shoulder, and slides it underneath his jacket.

He’s committing a crime.

Chris speedwalks out of the aisle, down the walkway, behind Hayley at the circulation desk, and right out the front door. He’s on the sidewalk, one hand frozen, still wrapped around the book inside his coat, when Hayley catches up.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” he hisses, as she falls into step beside him.

She laughs, breathless, and whispers back, “Just keep walking.”

~

This book has a lot of stuff in it that Chris has never heard of before.

He frowns as he flips past the part about smiting Lucifer. Well, he definitely doesn’t want to do that. Sebastian hasn’t talked about his dad much, but Chris would rather meet him the old-fashioned way.

You know, in Hell. Maybe on a Sunday. Maybe over brunch.

“Give me that,” Hayley demands. She’s sitting on the living room floor with a pair of scissors, a thick felt pen, and an empty cereal box.

Chris hands the book over.

He watches her for a minute, as she props the book open against the leg of the couch, and hunches over her flattened cereal box.

~

Hayley’s drawn six separate symbols in thick, black ink when Chris tries to call Scarlett one last time.

~

“I need a bit of blood.” Hayley plops down onto the same sofa cushion he’s sitting on, and reaches for his hand. “Won’t hurt a bit.”

Chris’s entire face wrinkles up as she stabs him in the finger with a pin.

“What is this for?” he asks, watching as she squeezes, trying to get the blood to well.

With her free hand, Hayley reaches for her satanic arts and crafts project, and presses the pad of Chris’s bloody finger to it. The cardboard doesn’t absorb his blood, but maybe that’s the point. Chris doesn’t know much about this.

Sebastian always took care of the… paperwork.

“I’m just following the instructions for assembly.” She sets the cardboard flat on the coffee table. “Get the book.”

Sucking on his finger, Chris leans over and snags the book from where she left it on the carpet in front of the television. He peruses the page. It’s really a lot of steps, jeez, this is a whole ceremony. Chris looks up as Hayley lights a stubby red candle, and sets it beside Chris’s little blood patch.

“Now what?” he asks, handing the book over.

Hayley doesn’t take the book. She does, however, point to a complicated looking set of Latin phrases written along the bottom quarter of the page on the right.

“Let’s hear it, Gloria.”

~

Well, it’s been a few years since Chris felt this dumb.

He sits there and shakily makes his way through the Latin phrases on the page. It brings back very severe memories: a flashback to sitting on that hard wooden school bench, stuttering his way through a page from _The Happy Venture Readers_ out loud.

On his third read through, Hayley sighs, and blows out the candles.

~

Hayley pulls an Ouija board out of her hall closet next, and Chris can’t hide his surprise.

“What?” she asks, looking at Chris over one shoulder. She holds back a tower of folded blankets so they don’t fall over, and unwedges the board game box out from underneath them. “I used to have a lot of sleepovers.”

Chris gives her a look, but accepts the box.

~

“Hello,” Hayley calls again, rolling her eyes.

Nervously, Chris adjusts his finger against the edge of the planchette. One time his mother heard about Ouija boards from the women at church, and it’s all she talked about for weeks.

“Should we ask for Sebastian?” Chris asks. He really doesn’t want to get patched into somebody scary.

Hayley frowns, and looks down at the board. She stares at it for a long moment, thinking, and then closes her eyes decisively. Chris watches her with wide eyes, fingers tense and curled against the edge of the planchette.

He’s about to tap out when he feels a tug below his fingers, and then the planchette starts to go crazy. It’s such a surprise that he doesn’t even feel scared, he just stares down at the board, stunned.

“What did you do?” he blurts.

They watch as the planchette whips between two letters: Z-O-Z-O, over and over and over. Sometimes, the planchette gets so much speed behind it, Chris’s fingers get pulled away from the wooden edge, and the whole thing almost goes spinning off the board.

“Alright.” It’s gone on for ten minutes when Hayley draws it. “Sorry, wrong number!”

It takes some fighting - once Chris realizes what she’s doing, he really has to put his weight behind it, too - but they drag the planchette over to the spot that says _GOODBYE_ , and wait for the spirit to leave.

~

Chris makes them beans on toast for dinner.

“These are ridiculous,” he complains.

They’re sitting in the living room, eating and watching the nightly news. Chris is also flipping through the last pages of the grimoire, hoping to find something else they can try. So far, there aren’t a lot of options.

When he catches a drawing of an old-timey guy that bears a striking resemblance to Sebastian, he flips back.

“There’s got to be something else we can do.” Hayley is looking at her plate as she scrapes the flat of the fork against her beans, trying to get the last bite.

Chris grimaces and shakes his head.

“This one takes a week,” he sighs, flipping to the next page. He pauses, and skims over that section. “What’s goatskin parchment?”

He looks over to Hayley, but Hayley just shrugs and sucks the pad of her thumb.

Well. Maybe they could find a piece of it somewhere. It sounds easier to find than a fenny snake, whatever that is. He folds the corner down just in case.

“Do you have a black robe?” he asks, looking over at Hayley again.

~

The Satan book, it turns out, holds a lot of information on cloven-hoofed animals.

Chris would like to state - for the record - that, “This seems like a bad idea.”

In front of them, jumping to and fro among the sweetgrass, is a family of baby goats. Chris knows all of their names, because on he and Hayley’s way into the petting zoo, the volunteer at the front donation desk made sure to point them over to the wall displaying a Goat family tree.

Hayley cackles, and says, “Look at little Bartholomew!”

Bartholomew, Bachus, Barnabas, and Barbara. If Chris didn’t know better, he’d say Sebastian had a hand in naming them.

“Just…” he trails off. He’s never talked to a goat before. “Do you guys know Sebastian?”

Barnabas jump kicks off of Barbara’s head. Chris, horrified, looks over to Hayley for help, but she’s just laughing and scratching Bartholomew's bald little chin. Somewhere in the distance, a donkey hee-haws. Chris suddenly feels like he’s lost his mind.

“Oh my god.” He raises both hands up, and rests them on his head. “What am I doing?”

Still tickled, Hayley stands up properly, and looks over at Chris.

“Barbara seems to be a bit of a gossip,” she says, elbowing Chris when the tiny little grey goat makes a terrifying noise and head dives off of the foot long bench they’re all trying to stand on at the same time. “I think she may be your girl.”

Chris swallows. He rubs his face with both hands.

“Barbara.” His voice is strained. “I need your help.”

~

They get banned - permanently - from the petting zoo.

Barbara may be a gossip, but she’s also a snitch. Chris doesn’t know who sold them out to the volunteers in charge, but he’s got one baby goat he’d like to point the finger at.

He and Hayley are intercepted when Chris is found trying to run down a sheep.

“You can’t chase the animals,” a bored looking fat guy in a small vest says. He smacks his gum loudly at the back of his mouth, and reaches forward to push Chris back against the wall by the chest. Before Chris can say anything, the guy raises a Polaroid camera up, and snaps a picture. “Someone said you were talking to the goats too, man.”

Hayley grins and steps up next to Chris, sidling him out of the way.

“That was unrelated,” she promises. She pauses to pose, and then explains, “The sheep were especially difficult.”

The volunteer escorts them back to the parking lot.

~

As a last ditch effort, Chris stops by Yash’s for cigarettes and stamps.

He sighs, disappointed and tired, as he hands his ten dollar bill over.

“You have lost that magic, my friend!” Yash tells him, accepting the money. He points a finger at Chris with one hand as he gathers Chris’s change with the other. “I saw it in you! You could get it back.”

The corner of Chris’s mouth curves up into a smile. Yash actually has no idea how right he is.

“I know, pal,” he says. He puts his change right into the tip jar. “Believe me, I’m trying.”

~

The stamps are for the letters that Chris is going to write to Sebastian.

He digs around in Hayley’s kitchen drawer until he finds three mismatched envelopes. 

Chris didn’t read about this in any book, but he remembers. He watched Sebastian open thousands of envelopes just like these, tanned fingers working against the paper, knuckles curving and working as he ripped each one open on the side.

This is something Chris knows.

He doesn’t have much hair, so he trims a little bit of his beard off. That goes into the plain white letter sized envelope. Next, he clips a few of his fingernails with Hayley’s frustratingly small manicure scissors. His fingernails go into the card sized envelope, red and decorated down the sides with little printed sprigs of holly.

When he gets to the third envelope - manilla and legal sized - he looks down at himself.

He doesn’t know what else to give.

It takes him a minute to realize - and, then - he pulls an eyelash out as delicately as he can, and drops it into the envelope for good luck.

Then he addresses all three to SEBASTIAN, C/O HELL, and writes _PLEASE CALL ME_ three times on the back of whatever he can find: a receipt, a parking ticket, and a scrap of junk mail. He doesn’t sign his name.

Sebastian would know him anywhere. No matter what, Chris knows that.

~

Late that night, Chris and Hayley stand outside her apartment and share a cigarette.

Carson. He rubs his face roughly, and lets out a deep breath. He’s been so caught up with trying to track Sebastian down, he hasn’t even told his mother yet. If his parents catch the late block tomorrow night, they’re going to be in for one hell of a surprise.

“Are you ready?” Hayley asks. She hands the cigarette back, and crosses her arms over her chest to keep out the chill.

Chris looks at the cigarette between his fingers and then catches her eye.

“No,” he answers, honest.

~

The next afternoon, Chris is antsy.

He stares at the red light in front of them with the laser focus of a man toeing the line between sobriety and a brutal anxiety attack.

“Will you stop,” Hayley begs, oversized McDonalds soda clutched in one hand. “You’re making ME nervous.”

The light changing surprises Chris, even though he was waiting for it. He accidentally guns it, hitting the gas way too hard, and they take off abrupt enough to send their burgers sliding along the bench seat. Hayley makes a valiant save.

They shouldn’t have left so early. They left way too early and now they’re going to drive around Burbank all day and Chris is going to get more and more wound up, and-

“What’s the address again?” Chris checks his rearview mirror compulsively. Every now and then, the little hairs on the nape of his neck stand up.

Hayley clears her throat, and consults the paper Mitzi gave him. Chris still hasn’t worked up the nerve to look at it for himself.

“It’s on West Alameda,” Hayley shrugs. “I think we’ll see it.”

Right. Right, that makes sense. It’s a big property, the biggest television studio in North America, and that, that-

“This is a good idea, right?” He can’t help the note of panic his voice has taken. If he was toeing the line before, he’s now fallen over it and landed on the concrete with a loud, resounding crack. “What am I gonna do up there?”

Jesus, what is he gonna do up there!!

“Chris.” Hayley’s got her no nonsense tone on. He tries to ease up on the wheel, knuckles white from how tightly he’s clutching the worn leather. “Believe me. You can do this.”

He nods, and tries to let out a calming breath, but it just comes out staccatoed.

They find the studio ten minutes later. Hayley was right: it’s a compound, and easy to spot from the street. Chris rolls past the parking spot that says _JOHNNY CARSON ★_ and takes another shaky breath.

~

A nice girl in a canary yellow skirt suit checks them in.

“Oh, isn’t the rain terrible?” she asks, handing Hayley her ID back. Chris drums his fingers on the edge of the receptionist counter and looks around with wide eyes. The entire lobby is covered with framed 8x10’s: Cary Grant and Julie Andrews and Steve McQueen… “Ventura flooded this morning!”

They’re handed plastic passes with VISITOR stamped on each one. They get away with Hayley pretending to be Chris’s manager, a role she slips into with startling confidence. 

It isn’t until they’re deep in the belly of the studio - waiting in the green room and watching the show on a fuzzy monitor - that Chris realizes he can’t go through with it.

This isn’t what he wants anymore.

It’s his fork in the road.

“Hayley,” he says. “Can you cut your set down?”

On the monitor, Carson is about halfway through his opening monologue.

“What for?” She’s distracted, poking through the small assortment of novelty items that were presented to Chris upon entrance: a replica of Carson’s mug, a fridge magnet, two things of peanuts and a pack of Twizzlers that only reminds him of Scarlett. “Yours is plenty long enough. Licorice?”

Chris shakes his head, “No. I want you to take my place.”

“WHAT.” Hayley’s voice is deafeningly loud. So loud, that Chris jerks his gaze over to the monitor to make sure they’re still rolling in the other room. “I’m sorry, you’re going to have to bloody say that again.”

Trying to be quiet, Chris SHHs her and dips forward, taking a seat on the edge of the coffee table. Now that he knows he’s going to break out of here and find Sebastian, his nervousness is gone.

“You’re my fork,” he says, stupidly. She looks at him and grimaces. “No, I don’t - not in a weird way.”

She wrinkles her nose. “I’d rather not get smote by the devil, thank you.”

“He’s not going to- listen.” Jesus, Chris can’t get into an argument now. He holds her by both shoulders and looks at her. “It’s criminal that you haven’t been invited already.”

Smiling with the corner of her mouth, she says, “I sold my soul to the devil and all I got was this lousy Tuesday night gig.”

“Exactly.” Now Chris is laughing. “Take this. It’s supposed to be yours, Hayley, please.”

~

This is the strangest moment of Chris’s life - and that’s saying a LOT.

He feels his way through the curtains blindly, trying to find where they break. The studio lights are hot - hotter than he even imagined they would be - and they’re beating on his back, through his shirt.

On the other side of the curtain, the audience is laughing at the monologue Carson does with his guests during the commercial break.

This is the last commercial break.

“Where are you!” Chris hisses, fingers traipsing through the velvet.

He hears the floor director begin to shout on the other side of the curtain, but it’s just muffled enough that he can’t make out the words. For one heart-stopping second, Chris thinks he might be stuck doing this. He might be out here all by himself and-

“Here!” Hayley’s hand grabs his.

Chris tugs her through the curtains - who needs so many - and, a little out of breath at the excitement, shows her the mark the floor director pointed out to him just a few minutes ago. 

It’s only been 90 seconds, less than. That’s how long it takes to change everything.

“How do I get out of here?” Chris asks, peering up at the ceiling.

He feels Hayley pull him into a sudden, tight, hug.

“Thank you.” Her voice is muffled into the fabric of his sleeve, but even over all the other sounds, he can hear her perfectly. “You’re the best man I ever met.”

Well, jeez. That’s really very kind.

“Good luck,” he says back, getting a little bit choked up.

They hug for another squeeze, until the audience outside falls quiet and Chris knows it’s coming. It’s almost showtime.

“You better send me a letter!” Hayley hisses, as Chris starts to paw at the fabric, trying to get out before the curtain goes up. “Hey! I want an eyelash, too!”

Chris finds an exit. With one shoulder out, he looks back, and grins.

“Anything,” he promises, ducking out just as the house curtain begins to rise.

~

The drive to Marina Del Rey seems short - shorter than it’s ever been.

Chris, still frazzled with excitement, parks his car in its usual spot. Usually Sebastian zaps the City of Venice permit sign to give him a full 24 hours, but Chris doesn’t mind running the risk of getting a ticket tonight.

In front of houseboat number 666, The Underworld, Chris raises a hand, and knocks.

He waits to hear the dogs rumbling - he misses those guys a lot.

“I know you’re in there!” Chris shouts, reinvigorated. He saw the interior lights from shore, and he’s not going to give up now. He’ll stand here all night if he has to. He’ll bang on the door until the cops come and take him away, and-

All of a sudden, the door opens.

“I don’t know where he is,” Scarlett says.

Jesus, Chris has never been so relieved to see someone in his whole life. He laughs, stunned, and claps his hands together.

“I don’t care!” The adrenaline is making him sound crazy. “Can you get me to Hell?”

If Sebastian is going to hide, Chris is going to be the one to find him. He’s never been to Hell, but he’s heard enough about it, and if he has to walk through it to drag Sebastian back to him, he will.

“Right to Hell, huh?” she smirks, leaning one hip against the doorframe. She crosses her arms, and studies Chris’s face.

Chris narrows his eyes. “Well, someone wasn’t picking up my calls.”

“Sorry.” She’s not. “Doctor’s orders.”

Damnit, he should have known it would be harder to strike a deal with her than it was with the Devil. They watch each other, Chris trying his very best to keep a straight face, until he groans and gives in.

“I got banned from the petting zoo,” he admits.

Scarlett’s straight face begins to wobble. She chews her bottom lip, but Chris holds eye contact, and it makes her crack.

“I heard.” Now she’s laughing. “Good call on the sheep, by the way. Not really the target demographic, but sure, why not.”

Frowning, Chris arranges his face until it’s extra sad, and asks, “So will you help me?”

She swings the door all the way open and waves him inside.

~

“You’re sure this will work?” he asks, looking up from where she’s scribbled the description of a book in red ink.

It’s on Sebastian’s stationary - black matte cardstock - and Chris can’t decide whether he wants to tear it up into a thousand frustrated pieces, or press it close to his chest and hold whatever he’s got left of Sebastian tight.

“Do I look like a liar?” Scarlett volleys back, which is really not an answer at all.

Chris frowns and reads the description again: _Latin, skin-bound, scary. Picture of a snake. Embossed with blood._

It does seem right.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” he mutters, shaking his head.

Scarlett is sitting in Sebastian’s usual spot, at the head of the sprawling conference table on the main floor of the office. It’s the same spot Chris stood and signed his name in blood for the very first time.

If there was one set of coordinates that showed where Chris’s life changed forever, this would be the place.

“I can.” Scarlett looks at him and smiles soft and warm. “That was a good thing you did, by the way.”

Chris looks up from the card - _embossed with blood,_ oh god - and raises his eyebrows.

“What did I do?” he asks, genuinely confused.

Scarlett rolls her eyes and replies, “You gave your friend time on Carson. Most people would die for that kind of opportunity.”

“I almost did.” Even as Chris says it, he smiles.

~

Okay, Chris. You can do this.

You’ve seen a lot of fucked up things, and this isn’t that bad.

This isn’t - AHH - that bad - they’re - THEY’RE - only snakes.

Confidence. That’s - WHAT - Yash told you.

“He-AH-llo,” Chris gasps, trying to step lightly. “Do you all happen to - AHH - know where Se - SEB - is?”

Being up here without Sebastian to call them off is terrifying. Chris shifts his foot, desperately trying not to kick, and holds onto his chest. His heart is trying to pound out through his chest and if it does he knows these snakes will eat it like a snack.

They don’t like him very much, that’s for sure. As Chris makes his way over to the bookcase Scarlett described to him, he shakes one out of his pant leg.

Every single snake hisses as he walks by, but he’s not a world traveller yet, and he doesn’t know what they’re trying to say.

“Okay,” he pants, fully out of breath by the time he locates the bookcase.

As an afterthought, he gingerly picks up a rickety old chair from where it was sat up against the wall, and places it on the floor beneath where the book should be. He’s looking for the oldest one here, made out of skin. Chris isn’t sure what kind of skin, and he isn’t about to start asking specifics.

He uses the chair as a snake free island as he begins to poke through the shelf.

“Shit,” he swears, jerkily holding onto the shelf when the snakes almost knock him and his chair over. He’s gotta make this fast, they’re really starting to turn on him.

The book is almost exactly where Scarlett said it would be, and it is… definitely made out of skin and blood. Chris makes a face as he looks at the cover. That’s a picture of a snake. This is the one.

He consults his little note again, and then awkwardly holds the book with one forearm as he flips through until he finds the section titled _Aliquam A ad inferos._

Chris double checks the title to what Scarlett wrote down - he’s seen what happens when you accidentally get just one Latin word wrong - and then tucks the card into his butt pocket. The only word he recognizes is _Inferos._ He’s seen it in the “Return Sender” field on some of Sebastian’s mail.

“Alright,” he says to himself, and then clears his throat.

He still isn’t the very best at reciting Latin. He’s going to have to go to a class at the library or something. But, he struggles his way through the incantation, one hand shooting out to steady himself against the shelf when the snakes almost knock him off his rocker again.

After he says the last word out loud, he squeezes his eyes closed, expecting a zap or a sizzle, or even a change of scenery - like when Sebastian pops them somewhere.

Chris doesn’t get any of that. He does, however, get a snake crawling up his leg.

“Snake!” he yells stupidly, mostly because he doesn’t know its biblical name. 

He kicks his leg out and it goes flying and then he feels terrible, first for potentially injuring one of Sebastian’s closest brethren, and then even more so when he realizes the spell must not have worked. 

It’s the most let down Chris has ever felt.

Sighing, Chris closes the book, feeling very forlorn, and sets it back on top of the shelf rather than in its original spot. He’s going to talk to Scarlett again. He’s going to talk to her, and explain what happened, and maybe ask if they can corral the snakes, and then he’s going to-

There’s a huge fiery hole in the ground in front of him.

Chris stops immediately. He looks around, and then over both shoulders.

Then he gets down off his chair, and carefully levers himself down through the hole.

~

Hell is beautiful.

Chris lands with a jerk, feet first on the ground. The soil is the first thing he sees - it’s grey, so grey it’s almost blue. Otherworldly. When Chris was in elementary school and daydreamed about living on Neptune in a space age future, it was a lot like this.

He wipes his hands off on his thighs, and looks up.

Sure enough, the inside of Sebastian’s inner sanctum hangs there, suspended like a fishbowl. Snakes are still falling through, landing in the same space blue dirt Chris is standing in before they slither off into the darkness.

Chris straightens up, and looks around. He doesn’t know where to slither to.

It’s - Chris doesn’t know what else to call it - heavenly. He recognizes the sky from Sebastian’s descriptions. Right now the stars form an Aquarius zig-zag. Chris laughs, because it’s so unbelievable. He’s daydreamed it a thousand times.

He takes a step, and things begin to fall into place. His heart stutters and stops inside his chest every time a flood light brightens another corner - hellish scenes, from what looks like a screaming orgy to an entire river made of bodies writhing in pain.

Chris wishes he had a map. He passes underneath a sign that says _Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate._

“Hi,” he calls, spotting an old-timey man dressed like the Pope. “Do you know Sebastian?”

The words aren’t even out of his mouth before the Pope begins to scream, and scream, and scream. It’s so obnoxious Chris has to cover both ears.

“Nevermind!” he yells back, squinting.

Jeez. Just cause you’re in Hell doesn’t mean you have to act like a dick.

Chris bypasses the entire rest of that vestibule. He doesn’t think he’s going to get any help from anyone hanging out around that salty Pope.

He finds a bunch of people running around naked next, which seems encouraging.

“Hi I’m just- AHH!”

When the swarm of wasps and hornets race by after them, twisting Chris’s guts up with their buzzing vibrations, he screams and drops down to the ground. He digs his fingers into the blue soil and pants, out of breath and shaky with adrenaline.

He’s going to smack the shit outta Sebastian when he finds him.

~

Chris isn’t sure how long he walks for.

He ends up taking the piece of stationary out of his back pocket, and scratching himself a map - just in case. He steps in a puddle of maggots, sees a fat bald yellow guy being force-fed donuts, and trips over a lady trying to rip out her own guilty conscience before deciding to take a break.

“I wish he’d hurry up and leave again,” Chris hears someone complaining. He found a semi-normal looking tree to sit under, and is just trying to ignore the bats hanging upside down from its branches. “He’s smiting everyone with a part-time schedule.”

Chris, intrigued, frowns a little and tilts sideways, trying to sneakily spy over one shoulder.

“Tell me about it,” another voice bitches. “I can’t take another week of him making the schedule. All I’ve been doing is ferrying corpses across the Acheron.”

They are definitely talking about Sebastian.

“What!” Now the first voice is shocked. “That’s bullshit. That’s a new soul’s job. How long have you been here for?”

The second voice sounds glum as it answers, “Five hundred and fifty six years.”

Chris twists a little more, trying to hear the rest of their conversation, but they’re already too far away to make anything else out.

Frowning, Chris gets back to his feet, consults his little map, and resumes walking.

~

He finds a statue of Sebastian in the middle of a courtyard full of apple trees.

“Stupid,” he tells its face, but he’s smiling.

On his way past, he peeks back over his shoulder, too, just to get a look at the butt.

~

It takes Chris a long time to get across the stinky, swampy lands of the River Styx.

He’s less than happy to find he can go no further once he reaches the other side.

Covered in mud and underworld goo, Chris stares up at the sudden mountainside in front of him. His mouth hangs open. The words CITY OF DIS are suspended in a happy, jaunty arch between two jet black trees. The CITY OF DIS sign is, of course, made of fire, and the trees are, of course, prehistoric in both size and stature.

Beyond the entryway - inside the city proper - Chris can see mountains of rolling fire, the same kind of fire that burns off of Sebastian, that Chris can lay in and walk through without so much as singeing a hair. Above the mountains, dark blue skies full of the stars Sebastian has described.

Chris has a moment of panic. This is it - this is Sebastian’s _home._ And then it all comes crashing down.

“Hi,” he says awkwardly, approaching what looks like a shop girl. She’s young - younger than Chris, definitely younger than Sebastian - and sitting behind a desk on the right side of City entrance. Chris raises his eyebrows. “I’m looking for someone.”

She looks up at him, and Chris startles backwards. Her eyes are a heart-stoppingly cold shade of grey.

“Who may I ask you are?” As she tilts her head, her hair moves atop her skull.

He realizes there’s a name tag pinned on her chest: MEDUSA.

Chris gives her a wary look. Oh, god, he was hoping a bridge troll would be as bad as it got. Whatever is happening here is way beyond his depth.

“Chris,” he manages. “I’m… I’m Chris. Sebastian, is he… here?”

He compulsively pats himself down - he should have brought some jewels to offer, or something. He thinks back to Sunday school, and what they taught about Hell folk, but all he remembers is frankincense and myrrh.

“Are you a heretic?” she asks brightly, tilting her head to the side.

Chris opens his mouth. They stare at each other, her watching him with her cold snake eyes, until, “I don’t go to church on Sundays,” tumbles out of his mouth.

There’s a long pause.

“I’m sorry, sir. I think you’re in the wrong place.” She blinks in the same way Sebastian blinks, and all of a sudden Chris is being stunned with different colored lights from all directions. “Dis residents are very proud of their demographic.”

Surprised, Chris turns around and around, reading the huge neon signs that are now glowing all around him. Each one is a different color, and a different font: _heretics, murderers, blasphemers, usurers, sodomites, panderers, seducers, flatterers…_ the list goes on and on.

“I’m a sodomite!” he exclaims, pointing that one out. “Excuse me! That’s me! Right there!”

But, just as soon as they appeared, the neon signs zap away - _pop, pop, pop, pop._

“Sir,” the woman says flatly. “You don’t belong here. Please go.”

~

The residents from the Lower Circle of Hell are very unhelpful.

As Chris makes his way back through the stupid River Styx, he stews about it. Everyone is so busy screaming and crying about spending life in the eternal fire, nobody even stops to say, “Hello.”

On the other side of the river, Chris sits down on a bench made out of bones.

This really might be it. He hangs his head in his hands, and stares out over the horizon of Hell. He was _so close._ Sebastian was right there, and he couldn’t reach him. After everything - after the Ouija board and the crossroads and the goats and the snakes and losing everything he owned in a fire - Chris really thought he had a chance.

Damnit. He really thought he had a chance.

~

He drags his feet on his walk back through Hell.

As he shuffles, he takes in as much as he can. He knows he won’t get to see any of it again for a very long time. There are Hell flowers, every one of them a color he’s never seen before. Those he stops to admire for a very long time.

The orchard has more statues in it than Chris first realized. He’d been so focused on finding Sebastian, he hadn’t stopped to wander the paths woven between the apple trees.

Now that he has nowhere to be, he walks along the soil, hands in his pockets, and admires each statue - each one a different version of Sebastian. He walks deep enough into the trees to hit the 1800s, but then the statues really start to give him the jibblies.

It’s only when Chris tries to leave the orchard that he realizes one of the snakes from the office is following him home.

~

Crawling back up through the hole is much harder than dropping through it was.

Alright, well.

Chris grimaces up at it, trying to judge his distance, and then looks over his shoulder as he takes a few long strides back. He squares his shoulders, takes a deep breath, and runs.

It’s not easy - he hasn’t done this kind of shit since basic training - but his jump gives him enough air to grab onto the edge.

From there, he bites his lip and pulls his own body weight back up and through the hole.

“Jesus,” he pants, flopping back on the floor.

He stares up at the ceiling of Sebastian’s office - his inner sanctum - as his legs dangle in Hell.

~

Chris has NO IDEA how to close the Hell hole.

He can’t find Scarlett anywhere, and flipping through the skin book offers him exactly zero answers. After a moment of panic where he debates his limited options, he ends up jogging down to the kitchen for the broom.

There are so many snakes in up here - floor absolutely writhing with them - they’re still falling through to Hell.

Chris apologizes under his breath as he sweeps as many snakes as he can away from the hole. And then, because he doesn’t know what else to do, he duct tapes a bed sheet over it.

It’s not going to keep anything out, but it’ll at least keep the snakes in.

~

Someone’s gotta have some fucking answers for him.

By the time he’s ready to leave Sebastian’s, early dawn is beginning to break over the water. It felt like he was in Hell for a week, but the grandfather clock patiently ticking in the front hall says he was only gone for six hours.

On his way out, he gives the gargoyle a look.

Actually, on the other hand-

“Do you know where he is?” he asks. “If you do, tell me.”

The gargoyle doesn’t move. Chris waits. He’s a patient man and he’s got all the time in the world. He peers closer. The gargoyle doesn’t move. He pokes its belly with his keys, because he doesn’t want to touch it with his finger and accidentally get turned to dust or stone. The gargoyle doesn’t move.

“If you tell me, I’ll fix your perch,” Chris finally counters.

A second later, the gargoyle’s eyes shift, and look him dead in the eye.

“He is not here.” The gargoyle’s lips quiver up into something like a smile.

Chris grimaces at the gargoyle with his whole face and lets the door slam as he leaves.

~

He really hates that gargoyle.

~

“ALRIGHT,” Chris shouts, banging open the doors of the tiki bar.

It’s pitch black on the inside, but Chris doesn’t let that stop him. He’s been to Hell. He’s ready to confront a couple of 500 year old faces. In fact, he’s got half a mind to turn back, crawl through that Hell hole again, and pop Medusa in the nose.

He hits all of the wall switches at once, and floods the bar with bright lights.

“You!” Lono, Sebastian described him as the God of Peace. Chris watches as his face clunks to life. His heavy wooden eyelids shift, and he grimaces, upset with the sudden bout of light. “I’m Chris, and I know we don’t know each other very well, but-”

Before Chris can say his piece, Ku - God of War, purveyor of human sacrifice - chugs through the motions of waking up, and booms, “NO KA PĀKAI.”

Chris’s hackles rise. He remembers this guy giving Sebastian a hard time, too.

“I don’t think we were ever introduced.” Chris holds one hand out. “Is that…” Hawaiian? Chris isn’t sure. He remembers that Ku is only a wooden face, and drops his hand. “I’m Chris.”

“HE NO ANA O KE AKUA.”

Ku’s voice is so loud, something falls and crashes behind the bar.

“You’re _mean_ ,” Chris grimaces, frowning at Ku’s big ugly face. He feels himself getting all fired up with adrenaline - the _nerve_ of this guy - they barely know each other! Ku rolls his eyes loudly. “Maybe if you were nicer, some human would want to be your sacrifice.”

The overhead lights flicker, and for a split second, Chris worries he’s just got himself killed by an old Hawaiian god.

Lono says, “E mihi, e ke keiki,” with his calm, steady voice. “ʻAʻole mākou iʻike iā ia i nā lā he nui.”

Chris doesn’t know what Lono is saying, but he sounds earnest and helpful. For a second Chris feels kind of silly for calling Ku out, but then when he looks over to apologize, he realizes he’s being scowled at.

“I appreciate your help,” Chris tells Lono - specifically. “If you see him… just, tell him I stopped by, or something.”

He hits all the lights on his way back out of the bar.

~

There’s only one person left on earth that might be able to help Chris.

So, he gets in his car, and heads in the direction of Santa Cruz.

 _“And now to Paul with the weather,”_ the announcer on the car radio says.

Chris listens to the KPAL bumper and drums his fingers nervously on the wheel.

_“Thanks, Kent. Residents all over Los Angeles and its surrounding areas are dealing with some downright scary weather lately. It was only one week ago when a record-breaking 1.39 inches of rain fell in downtown LA, and the days since have been anything but ordinary.”_

Frowning, Chris reaches, and turns the volume up.

_“High schools in Bel-Air remain closed after a freak thunderstorm blew the city’s electrical grid. The Mayor says the panel was replaced last year.”_

Chris puts his foot on the gas and drives a little faster.

~

Clouds of sand and dust billow out from underneath the body of Chris’s car as he peels into the parking lot at Shrunken Ed’s.

He throws it into park, yanks his keys from the ignition, and kicks the door open.

“Hermes!” Chris shouts and coughs, waving an arm in front of his face to try and clear some of the dust he kicked up peeling in here like a maniac. He chokes again and breaks into a jog. “HERMES!”

Chris is banging up the steps when Hermes comes crashing through the front door.

Literally through it. Shoulder first.

“ARE YOU ALRIGHT!!” Hermes booms. His face is contorted with worry, and he’s ready to assist, both arms stretched out protectively.

Chris watches, momentarily stunned, as Hermes looks this way and that.

Now he feels a little bit dumb. Silence hangs between them for a long, chest-heaving minute, before Chris manages, “I’m looking for Sebastian.”

“SEBASTIAN,” Hermes blurts, eyes going huge. Chris squints at him.

That’s a very suspicious face.

“Yes, Sebastian.” Chris steps to the side as Hermes starts to pick up pieces of the smashed out door. The best summary Chris has got is, “He lit my apartment on fire and then he left me.”

But that about covers it, right?

Hermes is not looking at him. “Sebastian did this.”

“He did.” Chris pauses, hedging for a minute. “Do you know where he is?”

He knows he’s got Hermes when Hermes pauses, gets a sad look all over his stupid, statuesque face, and sits back on his heels. He looks up at Chris with a creased brow and puppy dog eyes.

“I do not wish to lie to a human,” he admits. Chris’s heart stops. Hermes looks at him carefully, and then sets his jaw and goes back to fishing strips of splintered wood off the ground. “I will not lie to a human.”

Behind him, out of his field of vision, Chris kicks a leg and then punches the air.

He’s found his man.

“So you’ll help me.” He makes his voice as sober as he can despite the butterflies crashing into the walls of his chest, and squats across from Hermes to help him pick up the pieces. “You’ll tell me where he is?”

Hermes frowns at him.

“He was here,” he says. Then Chris sees that conflict tug his expression in two directions again, eyebrows tense and bottom lip curled. Chris puts on his best ‘please help me, I’m a stupid defenseless human’ face on. “He knew you would come.”

What.

“He knew…” This is new information. “He knows what I’ve been doing?”

Just like that, the butterflies go up in the lick of a flame. Adrenaline floods his chest.

“I am sorry, human friend,” Hermes says pathetically. In the distance, a deafening clap of thunder strikes, followed by a strike of lightning so big, Hermes’s face is lit paper white for a split second. “He is expecting you.”

Then Chris hears the distinct sound of two cars crunching together.

Numb, he stands up, and turns around to face the highway.

A full electrical storm crackles overhead. Tiger stripes of lightning split down from the purple-lit clouds, and disappear into the dark blue ocean below. Chris’s mouth drops open. On the highway, cars swerve and veer off the road.

Sebastian is walking down the center line, a procession of fire behind him.

“Oh! Here he is now,” Hermes exclaims.

Chris thought he’d be relieved. He really, really thought he’d be relieved-

He’s cutting back across the dusty parking lot before he even realizes what’s happening. He can feel his heart thunking, crazy and unhinged, inside of his chest. His hands are twisted into fists.

On the highway, Sebastian walks slow. Unhurried. 

He’s dressed in black from head to toe. Horns out. He is a nightmare, a cardboard cutout of sin, set against the ash and brimstone cavalcade he’s leaving behind.

And it turns out, this thing that Chris feels. It isn’t relief. It’s fury.

“I HAVE BEEN LOOKING _EVERYWHERE_ FOR YOU,” he screams, jerkily bending down and picking up a rock to throw.

Chris is a pretty good shot. The rock is in the air and flying towards Sebastian’s face before Chris even realizes what he’s doing. Right before it pops Sebastian in the nose, however, it pulls a u-turn, and pointedly drops to the ground.

The wind is howling so loudly around them, Chris can only hear himself. There’s so much dust being kicked up, the parking lot is all he can taste. Another car goes sailing into the rugged Californian mountainside with a sick crunch.

“I’m sorry, kitten.” Sebastian looks him in the face. “I didn’t want to be found.”

His jaw is covered in stubble, almost a beard, and Chris has never seen him like that before, but that’s beside the point-

Unable to stop himself, he gawks at Sebastian. He’s never been so dumbstruck before.

Somewhere in the distance an air siren begins to blare.

Jeez, Chris thinks, bringing his hands up to cover his ears. He grimaces. If that’s all Sebastian is going to say - _sorry, kitten_ \- well, Chris has got plenty more to serve up.

He tries to cover his eyes, his face, tries to stop the dust and the dirt and the ash from getting into his nose and mouth. It’s hard to get a good look at Sebastian with everything going on.

Sebastian is his sudden bright spot in this highway stretch of Hell on earth.

And he’s mad - he’s very mad - but now that Sebastian is here in front of him, Chris can feel the anger, the desperation, ebbing.

He just wants to ask Sebastian how he’s been.

Rallying himself, Chris jumps, startled, when another jag of lightning strikes the ground right beside where they stand. It leaves nothing but a cloud of smoke and sizzly embers in its wake.

“You didn’t have to burn down my apartment.” Chris doesn’t know where to start, so he just starts talking. Police sirens begin to howl in the distance, emergency aid workers on their way to the scene of the crime. “Innocent people could have been killed, Seb.”

Sebastian rolls his eyes and snorts, “Oh, give me a break.”

Just like that, the curl of heat - of contention - is back in Chris’s gut. It was one thing to play some spooky games, and zap Chris’s pants off whenever the mood struck, but to fuck with honest men and women-

“You really think I’d do that?” Sebastian’s judging him back, now. “Damn, peanut, I’d never hear the end of it. No one got hurt. Yours was the only apartment that burned.”

That… effectively takes the wind out of Chris’s sail.

“Well.” He pauses and crinkles his brow. Jesus, Chris, _think of something._ He should have written a speech down. “You didn’t have to disappear like that.” There we go, that’s a good one - he was real mad about that. Sebastian looks into the distance and the siren stops. Chris lowers his hands from his ears. “We agreed I could work my debt off.”

Sebastian nods. “We did.”

“Now you have my soul, and-”

Chris sees the exact moment Sebastian’s temper spikes. He startles, ducking, as a car flips, and lands upside down.

“I never took your shitty soul, Chris,” Sebastian snaps.

That-

Chris feels like he just got struck in the face.

He stares at Sebastian, but Sebastian is doing a good job of looking absolutely anywhere but Chris.

“...you never took my soul?”

Sebastian crosses his arms. The ground at their feet is gently sizzling.

“No. I didn’t.” His nose wrinkles up, and he grimaces and rubs over his face with one hand. After a long pause, he lets out a deep breath, flicks his gaze over to Chris, and summarizes, “You are… all you.”

Well. Fuck. Chris doesn’t know what to say about that.

For the first time, though, he realizes he hurt Sebastian’s feelings with that list.

“I thought…” but he trails off, because he didn’t think, not really. He assumed, and then it backfired. He feels like an asshole and an idiot all in one. He never- he never thought Sebastian could love him. “I thought this was just business.” He doesn’t- “I didn’t know, Seb. I swear, I… I didn’t know.”

Sebastian smiles at him, a little sad.

“You were getting into Heaven.” He smiles at Chris like he’s proud of him, and then laughs, bewildered. “Not even entry level, needs 20 years of office experience Heaven. The good one.”

Chris stares.

He’s had his soul all along? Sebastian never… Sebastian never?

“If I took your soul, that would have been it. You wouldn’t have even been allowed in the front door.” Sebastian pauses, like he’s debating saying more, and then touches the back of his head restlessly. He shrugs one shoulder. “So. There you go.”

Flabbergasted, Chris stands there, feeling foolish and surprised and-

“You should have said something!” He doesn’t want to get mad about this, but jesus, that’s exactly what’s happening. He can feel it in his chest: the realization and adrenaline, and the sudden desperation of knowing he made a mistake. “Seb! Why didn’t you _tell me?_ I don’t…” He trails off, lost, and then says sadly, “I don’t wanna go there.”

Sebastian narrows his gaze, unsure that he won’t get burnt twice.

“I swear.” Chris holds one hand up like a Boy Scout. “I spent a whole week in Hell! I was looking for _you!”_

The sound of thunder and lightning begin to fade, but the sirens get closer.

Sebastian’s mouth begins to curl up into a smile. In fact, it kind of looks like he’s trying not to laugh.

“I heard about that.”

Chris raises his eyebrows, and says, voice as earnest as it’s ever been, “I wasn’t looking for my soul down there, Seb. I was looking for you.”

As Sebastian processes that, he gives Chris this _look,_ with a raised eyebrow and an “okay, pal” pull to his mouth. It makes Chris laugh - because who else on earth would ever look at him like that? - and then all of a sudden, he’s hysterical.

He bends over, because he’s laughing so hard his stomach muscles are weak, and rests his forearms on his knees. He can hardly catch his breath.

“We tried to summon you!” He’s cackling and he can’t stop. “I talked to a GOAT.”

All Chris can see through his watery eyes are the toes of Sebastian’s pointed boots scuffed in the dirt. Sebastian takes a step closer, and Chris sees ankles, and calves, and knees, and-

“A family of goats, actually.” Sebastian smiles down at him. “Two generations.”

Chris hangs his face in his hands, shoulders still shaking. “Oh god.”

At the very least, now he knows why he can take the Lord’s name in vain without sizzling. 

“I got a lifetime ban from the _petting zoo,”_ he continues, abruptly looking up at Sebastian. He runs both hands over his head. “I can’t believe you let me do that!”

Now Sebastian is fully laughing. A firetruck pulls up at the side of the road as he extends a hand to Chris to help him up.

“Come on, kitten,” he says.

Chris lets himself be pulled back to his feet. 

~

Their soul equity list burnt up with the rest of Chris’s belongings.

“Guess that means I’m homeless,” Chris announces.

He and Sebastian are standing on the sidewalk outside his apartment. It’s been roped off with police tape since the last time Chris saw it. His neighbor told him they’re investigating for arsonry.

Sebastian folds in half and ducks under the police tape.

“Looks like it,” he agrees. The smug, self-satisfied grin on his face gets even wider as he walks across the burned out pit, coming to a stop in the pile of ash and rubble that was once Chris’s living room. The place they met. “Shame about that.”

~

The three letters Chris wrote to Sebastian show up over the next two weeks, forwarded to their Marina Del Rey address from his office in Hell.

Sebastian frames each one - “I didn’t know you knew how to grovel, peanut” - and hangs them up in the office.

“Yeah, well.” Chris looks up from where he’s tracing one finger down the curl of a snake, the same snake that followed him back out of the pit. “Don’t get used to it.”

~

Chris does his final set at The Comedy Store a month after Sebastian returns.

His headlining act, his name in lights, has been replaced by HAYLEY ATWELL, _As seen on The Tonight Show,_ and Chris has never been happier.

“So, I got fucked by the Devil last night,” he says, walking across the short stage, adjusting his mic wire so he doesn’t trip over it. The audience laughs, because it’s a raunchy - blasphemous - joke, meant to surprise. “You know he likes to hold hands? It’s true. Satan, jeez. Not as scary as you think. You know how hard it is to date someone who was born before the dawn of time, though? I found Mary Magdalene’s arm in a drawer. Sorry, Mary.”

The audience is laughing along, clapping at the really outrageous parts.

Chris smiles.

~

_What a match; I’m half-doomed, and you’re semi-sweet._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a number of sequels planned for this story - unsurprisingly, there are a lot of tales to tell about Mr and Mrs Satan - and though I don't know when they'll actually see the light of day, this is definitely not all we'll see of these guys!
> 
> As usual, I'll be [hanging out on tumblr for a few hours](http://sidnihoudini.tumblr.com) answering questions and messages related to Devils.
> 
> Hope you guys liked it - and as always, I'd love to hear what you thought :)


	8. PLAYLIST & REFERENCES

PLAYLIST

Wanna Be In LA - Eagles of Death Metal  
What a Wonderful World - Joey Ramone  
Cherry Bomb - The Runaways  
Beast of Burden - The Rolling Stones  
Mickey - Toni Basil  
I’ve Got To Use My Imagination - Gladys Knight & The Pips  
Hyper Worm Tamer - Grinderman, UNKLE  
These Boots are Made for Walking - Nancy Sinatra  
Tenderoni - Chromeo  
Evil Woman - ELO  
I Put a Spell On You - Screamin Jay Hawkins  
Why They Hide Their Bodies Under My Garage - Girl Band  
Sinnerman - Nina Simone  
In A Gadda Da Vida - Iron Butterfly  
I Touch Myself - Divinyls  
This Is Hardcore - Pulp  
Spirit in the Sky - Norman Greenbaum  
Disco Tits - Tove Lo  
Tainted Love - Marilyn Manson  
Fire - The Pointer Sisters  
Puttin on the Ritz - Taco  
The Killing Moon - Echo & The Bunnymen  
Mr. Crowley - Ozzy Osbourne  
Born to Beg - The National  
Rum ‘n’ Coca Cola - Timtim  
White Room - Cream  
American - Lana Del Rey  
Sympathy for the Devil - The Rolling Stones  
Monster Mash - Bobby Pickett & The Cryptkeepers  
Bloodstream - Stateless  
451 - Brand New  
I Wanna Be Adored - The Stone Roses

*

INFLUENCES

Characterizations: Pennywise (Tim Curry), Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder), Janet Weiss (Susan Sarandon), The Mask (Jim Carrey), Frank N Furter (Tim Curry). Pretty much every cult/camp character from the 80s and 90s.

Tone: 90s cult comedies like Blast from the Past and Slums of Beverly Hills, classic horror like Rosemary’s Baby, every Treehouse of Horror episode ever, watching [this music video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ix8ocFEMa1o) about a thousand times, [Cabaret](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgskuTUY--o), original Tim Burton movies like Beetlejuice and Frankenweenie, the first two seasons of Supernatural, obviously Dante’s Inferno, Pee Wee’s Playhouse, Jake Gyllenhaal [in this music video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pt9wnawn7xQ), and OF COURSE, Bedazzled.

*

REFERENCES

[Satan in the Suburbs](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0431376/) was a made-for-TV movie.

 _Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate_ = Abandon all hope, ye who enter (Latin)

In Greek mythology, [Minos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minos) was a judge of the dead in the Underworld.

[Mitzi Shore’s Comedy Store](http://thecomedystore.com/) was - and is - a real venue on Sunset Blvd. Here’s [Mitzi](https://wheelslive.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/mitzi_shore1.jpg).

Yash is Indian, and immigrated to Los Angeles after the [1965 Immigration and Nationality Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Act_\(1965\)) abolished restrictive quotas on certain regions.

Minimum wage [in California in 1974](https://www.dir.ca.gov/iwc/minimumwagehistory.htm) was $2.00 per hour. 

[Pall Mall 100s](http://www.magazine-advertisements.com/uploads/2/1/8/4/21844100/pall-mall-light-100s-1.jpg) have a third less tar than the leading filter!

 _“Are you there, God? It’s me, Chris”_ is obviously a direct shout-out to the ~classique coming of age book, [Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37732.Are_You_There_God_It_s_Me_Margaret).

[Rodney Dangerfield](https://www.biography.com/people/rodney-dangerfield-9542630) spent the 1950s as a car salesman.

Spoon bending was a trick often performed by [magician Uri Gellar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uri_Geller) in the 70s. It’s still used in most mainstream media as a sign of the paranormal.

[Musicians](http://othersidepodcast.com/blog/2014/11/01/1-making-a-deal-with-the-devil-the-musicians-who-sold-their-souls-to-satan/) have been selling their soul to the devil for decades.

Coca-Cola aired their [“It’s the real thing!”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6DGfpDQl4M) ad through the 60s and into the 70s.

[1960s beach party dancing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWKs--Xhu1g)!

The [Hollywood Hills sign](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_Sign) wasn’t restored until 1978, thanks to Hugh Hefner.

Sebastian’s Red Book is a direct shoutout to [the Devils’ Red Book](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deal_with_the_Devil): the ledger he keeps track of his contracts in.

[Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I’m Yours)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgT9QJ2htMc) is a song by Stevie Wonder.

 _Satanas fili abyssi_ = Satan, Son of the Bottomless Pit (Latin).

By the mid-70s, the Wilshire area of LA was attracting loads of South Korean immigrants; this area would later become known as Koreatown. The sign Chris sees while driving to Marina Del Rey [was a real sign](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/38/c3/0a/38c30a0e024bd4543084e07ffd2b650e.jpg).

 _Adieu, adieu, adieu_ is a shoutout to [So Long, Farewell](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkWtd4tZ4eY), which is a song from The Sound of Music. The actual lyric is: _Adieu, adieu, to yieu and yieu and yieu._

The four moving faces at the tiki bar are Ku, Lono, Kane, and Kanaloa - ancient Hawaiian tiki Gods. Ku, the God angry at Sebastian, is the God of War, and Lono, the God who tells Sebastian to stay, is the God of Peace.

The Devil did indeed invent the tambourine. From [an article](https://listverse.com/2016/01/23/10-common-things-people-believed-were-invented-by-the-devil/): Ezekiel 28:13 says of Satan, _“The workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created.” This suggests that power of percussion and pipe instruments was woven into Satan’s very being._

“Nothing beats a fig leaf -Eve” is the slogan from a line of [1950s Hanes underwear for men print ads](https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2643/4090667695_5685205d1c_b.jpg).

Daddy Warbucks is a character from the musical “Annie.”

The constellation “Felis the Cat” was created by Lalande in 1799. He said: “I am very fond of cats. I will let this figure scratch on the chart. The starry sky has worried me quite enough in my life, so that now I can have my joke with it.” It is now extinct.

[The Phlegethon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phlegethon) is the river of fire in the Greek underworld.

[Guennol Lioness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guennol_Lioness) is a 5,000-year-old Mesopotamian statue, created approximately around the same time as the wheel. We don’t know who was the artist behind the statue. [Enki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enki) was an unrelated ancient Mesopotamian god, and in the story, they are the one who gave Sebastian the statue.

A cleat is the metal object on a boat deck that you can tie a rope around.

Sebastian is singing [In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIVe-rZBcm4) on their way to Shrunken Ed’s.

The guy who runs Shrunken Ed’s is [Hermes](https://www.greekmythology.com/Olympians/Hermes/hermes.html), the Greek god of commerce and protector of travelers, thieves, and athletes. Hermes was known to trick other gods to protect humans/for his own amusement.

[Shrunken Head Guy from Beetlejuice](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj_inlzsDhQ) was 100% the inspiration for the visual characters of the heads at Shrunken Ed’s. [The statue from Art Attack](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loNL7Abd0qU) was the visual inspiration behind Hermes’ “human” form.

“GORGO!!” is short for “demogorgon” which is the Greek term for devil or unholy one.

The pineal gland, aka the third eye, aka the seat of the soul, aka the Evil Eye in Ancient Greece. According to Greek folklore, a charm in the form of an eyeball can ward off bad luck.

Placing your thumb on your nose and wiggling your fingers is a general sign of disrespect. And it’s been around for yeeeeaahs.

Seb getting turned into a frog is a little shoutout to [Thor: Ragnarok](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/thor-ragnarok-frog-joke-actually-happened-comics-1053041).

The summoning ritual Hayley tells Chris about is from season two of [Supernatural](http://supernatural.wikia.com/wiki/Demon_Summoning).

Marjorie is kind-of a shout out to ‘ole Gregory in The Bronze.

[The Gospel of Satan](http://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-ancient-writings/gospel-satan-grand-grimoire-one-creepiest-medieval-manuscripts-out-there-021709) is a medieval era grimoire.

“Let’s hear it, Gloria,” is a reference to Gloria Gaynor.

 _The Happy Venture Readers_ was [a series of books](http://schoolreading70sbooks.weebly.com/happy-venture.html) used to teach children how to read in grade school through the 50s to probably the early 90s.

If you want to spend a work week summoning Satan, [here’s your ritual](https://www.doktorsnake.com/2014/08/19/how-to-summon-the-devil-for-real-evil-power/).

Meet [ZoZo](https://www.thoughtco.com/zozo-encounter-2594835).

[Here’s what the NBC Burbank Studios looked like](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqGj5Bi77jg) during Chris’s visit.

 _Aliquam A ad inferos_ roughly translates to “A Ticket to Hell.”

Chris runs into Pope Celestine V in Hell first. Dante’s Inferno described the vestibule of Hell as belonging to “The Uncommited” - the souls of the people who, in life, took no sides.

The next group of people Chris runs into in Hell are the ones who took no sides in the Rebellion of Angels (bible shit). From Wikipedia: _Naked and futile, they race around through the mist in eternal pursuit of an elusive, wavering banner (symbolic of their pursuit of ever-shifting self-interest) while relentlessly chased by swarms of wasps and hornets, who continually sting them._

City of Dis is another reference to Dante’s Inferno. Dis is a city that contains Lower Hell within its walls. You have to be VERY bad or VERY powerful to get past the gates.

[Medusa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dis_\(Divine_Comedy\)) guards the City of Dis.

Google Translate tells me:

 _NO KA PĀKAI_ = DO NOT QUESTION US  
_HE NO ANA O KE AKUA_ = WE ARE OLD GOD  
_E mihi, e ke keiki_ = I am sorry, child  
_ʻAʻole mākou iʻike iā ia i nā lā he nui_ = We have not seen him in many days

However if you speak Hawaiian and these are embarrassingly incorrect, please send me a message!! I need you!!

[Paul was a real radio broadcaster and weatherman](https://www.nbclosangeles.com/on-air/about-us/Paul_Johnson.html) in the 70s.


End file.
